“We live in a world of crisis, of challenge, and … it's in our galleries that we can unpack the civilizations that we're seeing the current manifestations of.”
As the day folded into midnight, I found myself watching a TED talk the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s director, Thomas P. Campbell, about "Weaving narratives in museum galleries".
Intrigued by Campbell’s perspective of presenting stories of the past to modern-day people, I quickly ended up on the Met Museum’s website, scrolling through its contents and almost falling off my bed in excitement.
“So much cool stuff!” I kept thinking to myself. “How many times will I get to visit New York City? Surely I’d have to spend a full day here every time.”
The videos and photos onscreen merely hinted at the immersive, breathtaking and visceral worlds of experience this little idiot may just get to witness, as she tiptoes her way through the long halls of the Met in just a few months’ time, with its (as I imagine) pastel walls and high ceilings.
To put it simply, I adore good museums -- for their marvellous storytelling; for their celebration of our human existence; for how a collection of items and multimedia are able to bring stories of the past to life -- and I cannot wait to experience the Met, in all its encyclopaedic wonder.
And then, it hit me: This is it. Very soon, I will be stuffing the past two decades of my life into two suitcases, and flying off to the other side of the planet. It is about to happen, and it is very much real. I can almost feel the bite of winter on my skin already.
All this is about to unfold, and I am one heck of a lucky, lucky girl to be able to write this next chapter of my story.
Just a couple of days ago, I was with the Teach For Malaysia Fellows (Corps Members/teachers) I’ve been volunteering with, helping to bring a few students to the local state museum. Despite the challenge of engaging them in an intellectual matter and trying to make long paragraphs of small font understandable to the students who don’t read very well ... it was definitely an interesting experience for everyone.
Yet, as we walked through the dusty colonial building, I also realized that these kids may never get to experience a museum with exhibitions curated better than this haphazard little place.
At one point in his TED talk, Campbell said, “Bringing people face to face with [museum] objects is a way of bringing them face to face with people across time, across space, whose lives may have been very different to our own.”
In a country so divided by our differences, I believe this understanding that we are "same same but different", is precisely what Malaysians need in order to come together as a collective society again and move forward. Yet, for so many kids across the country, what are the chances of them having access to these seemingly basic experiences? Far too often, the odds have been stacked against them from the very start -- because of where they come from, and what their parents do (or don’t do).
And me, I’m just the girl who was in the right place, at the right time, who met the right people who believed in me. Yet, I’ve had the privilege of receiving scholarships and sponsored trips, of having my eyes pried open at the gorgeous Singapore National Museum, and sitting on seats signed by Nobel Laureates at the Nobel Museum in Sweden.
What did I ever do to deserve all this?
And perhaps the more important question is: How do I best navigate the journey ahead, to learn all I can about sharing this magic -- so that more people in the various nooks and crannies of our world will get to marvel at museums with high ceilings, and be inspired by the collective fabric of human existence we’ve woven together, too?