Gardens in the spotlight again

SINGAPORE - On the tail of the 155-year-old Singapore Botanic Gardens' bid last month to be a Unesco World Heritage Site, an exhibition dedicated to it has opened at the National Museum of Singapore.

The process of obtaining rubber is the focus of the More Than A Garden exhibition, a nod to its key role in boosting the early 20th-century prosperity of Malaya and Singapore.

Visitors can smell and touch a smoked rubber sheet, view a video and see rubber tapping tools as well as what was used to transport rubber seedlings.

Ms Jean Wee, director of the Preservation of Sites and Monuments division at the National Heritage Board, says the exhibition gives the public an idea of why the Gardens has been submitted as a Unesco bid. "People have asked us, 'Are you sure the Gardens can make it?' I want them to understand why we are putting in the Gardens, and for them to understand how significant rubber was as a crop that transformed our landscape and our economy at that time.

"We still have a long road ahead of us," says Ms Wee, adding that she hopes to receive clarifications on the bid by December this year.

The 222 sq m exhibition will also touch on the stories of four pioneering rubber tycoons in Singapore such as Tan Kah Kee, and includes a recording of Henry Nicholas Ridley's voice.

Ridley, the first scientific director of the Gardens, served for 23 years from 1888 and was called the "father" of the rubber industry. He was known for convincing Malayan coffee planters to grow rubber trees instead, and developing a more efficient method of latex gathering without damaging the tree.

The School of the Arts will also showcase its art installation created with rubber tyres wound with coloured yarn.

Student Yap Weiqi, 18, one of 13 students behind the installation, says: "We wanted to symbolise the refined function of tyres, which are what we always see, but we also wanted to show the texture, form and use of rubber as well."

As a nod to the Gardens' other crowning glory, there is a room with an orchid video art and scent installation.

Copies of natural history drawings from the William Farquhar collection - such as that of coffee - are also on display. The originals could not be brought in from the Goh Seng Choo Gallery at the national museum, as they need to be exhibited in the gallery's climate- controlled environment, says Ms Wee.

This $120,000 exhibition follows the recently opened 240 sq m Heritage Museum at Holttum Hall, sited next to the Botany Centre at the Gardens. That museum has interactive exhibits detailing the Gardens' history and displays of photographs, plant specimens and rare botanical books from the early 19th century.

The national museum's exhibition, in comparison, is a "less botanical" show, says Ms Wee. This is because it covers the research on rubber and orchids, the greening of Singapore as well as the promotion of racial harmony - as the Gardens hosted an inter-racial concert in 1959. She says: "It gives a more sociocultural view... how it relates from society to the Gardens and vice versa."

keziatoh@sph.com.sg

View it
MORE THAN A GARDEN
Where: Stamford Gallery, Level 1, National Museum of Singapore, 93 Stamford Road
When: Till May 11, 10am to 6pm daily
Admission: Free
Info: www.nationalmuseum.sg

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