Singapore Repositions Image As a Cultural Hub With Local Artists
Photo Credit: Singapore Tourism Board chose artists like Speak Cryptic to show a more edgy side to the city-state's cultural emergence versus playing it safe with culinary tourism marketing as some people proposed. SG50
Skift Take
Singapore is using the SG50 events in New York, Beijing, and London as a coming out party to argue that it's more than a business travel destination with great food and shopping.
Singapore is celebrating 50 years of nationhood with a two-week SG50 event in New York this month highlighting Singaporean culture, following similar events in Beijing and London earlier this year.
The agenda ranges from an interdisciplinary symposium on Singapore arts and society this past weekend to the innovative Singapore: Inside Out arts installation at Madison Square Park running September 23-27.
After achieving independence from Malaysia in 1965, Singapore rose from a colonial backwater with almost no natural water sources to a city-state of 5.4 million people with one of the world’s highest per-capita incomes.
Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who governed Singapore through its secession to a global financial hub by his retirement in 1990, passed away in March. He is revered among many Western and Eastern government officials for his accomplishments in nation building, irrespective of his authoritarian methods. Tony Blair said Yew was “the smartest leader I eve
