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Article: A global city for the arts?(Singapore)
- Article from:
- Art in America
- Article date:
- December 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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As Singapore's cultural ambitions expand to match its vigorous economy of recent years, artists and critics ponder their changing situation.
As the writer lan Buruma has observed, flying into Singapore can be a sobering experience for a Westerner. Buruma compares contemporary London's "crumbling Victorian buildings homeless people and potholed streets" with this gleaming, towering and spotless Southeast Asian city-state.(1) First-time visitors who have not personally witnessed the recent and radical transformations in Asia find it hard to believe that only 50 years ago, Singapore, like today's other economic "Little Dragons" (Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong), ...