The first work visitors see at the imposing new National Gallery Singapore — a $380 million complex housed in the former Supreme Court and City Hall — is a small 1865 print that could almost be a parody of colonial art.

新落成的新加坡国家美术馆(National Gallery Singapore)是一处耗资3.8亿美元的建筑，位于前最高法庭与市政厅之内，参观者走进这栋壮观的建筑，最先注意到的便是一幅小小的版画，它创作于1865年，几乎是对殖民艺术的一种戏仿。

The image, by the German illustrator Heinrich Leutemann, shows a tiger leaping out of the jungle at George Drumgoole Coleman, the Irish architect who helped lay out the city in its early days as a British colony. Coleman stands his ground, looking startled, while his turbaned, dark-skinned servants fall down.

这件作品由德国画家海因里希·莱特曼(Heinrich Leutemann)创作，上面是一只老虎从丛林中跳出来，扑向乔治·德拉姆古尔·科尔曼(George Drumgoole Coleman)，在英国殖民新加坡早期，这位爱尔兰建筑师曾经协助城市规划方面的工作。科尔曼站在那里，震惊地望着老虎，身边包裹头巾、皮肤黝黑的仆人们倒在地上。

“We looked high and low to see if this actually happened, and we don’t think it did,” said Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, a senior curator at the gallery, which wrapped up two weeks of opening celebrations on Dec. 6. He pointed to another historic picture, of a bustling port. “It’s supposed to be Singapore, but it’s got camels and minarets.”

“我们反复查证，想知道这一幕是否真的发生过，但我们觉得并没有，”美术馆的资深策展人沙布尔·侯赛因·穆斯塔法(Shabbir Hussain Mustafa)说，该馆将于12月6日举办为期两周的开业庆典。穆斯塔法指着另一幅历史题材的画作，上面是熙熙攘攘的码头。“这本应是新加坡，但上面却有骆驼和清真宣礼塔。”

Those early works, with their blend of myth and reality, colonialism and modernization, set the tone for the National Gallery’s collection, which traces the cultural and artistic shifts in Southeast Asia from the mid-19th century to the present day, including events like the Vietnam War and the effects of rapid industrialization on an agrarian society.

这些早期作品将神话与现实、殖民主义和现代主义混合在一起，为国家美术馆的收藏奠定了计调，它追溯东南亚自19世纪中期到今天的文化与艺术变迁，包括越南战争等重大事件，以及高速工业化对一个农业社会所带来的影响。

“This is the first major attempt by an institution to put together a collection of modern and contemporary art from Southeast Asia,” said Claire Hsu, executive director of the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong. “It hasn’t been done before at this scale or with this depth.”

“这是一个机构收集现当代东南亚艺术的第一次大型尝试，”香港亚洲艺术文献库总监徐文玠(Claire Hsu)说。“这样的规模与深度都是前所未有的。”

Singapore was long seen as a city equally focused on commerce and on controlling its residents’ habits (it once banned chewing gum), a paternalistic view that included keeping an eye on the entertainment and culture its citizens were consuming.

长期以来，新加坡被视为一个注重商业，同时对居民生活实行严格控制的城市（它一度禁止嚼口香糖），实行家长式统治，包括关注市民的娱乐与文化消费。

A decade ago, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the son of Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, who died in March at 91, mapped out a vision for the continued renewal of its civic district that would help Singapore overcome its reputation as a cultural desert. With trademark efficiency backed by hundreds of millions of state dollars, cultural landmarks were opened or renovated one by one: The National Museum of Singapore in 2006; the Peranakan Museum of local culture in 2008; and the Victoria Theater in 2014.

新加坡国父李光耀于今年3月逝世，享年91岁，十年前，他的儿子，时任新加坡总理的李显龙为城市居民区制定了规划，令新加坡摆脱了文化沙漠的名声。以雄厚的经济实力为支撑的标志性高效，令这里的文化地标一座接一座地兴建或翻新：2006年的新加坡国家博物馆；2008年关注本地文化的土生华人博物馆(Peranakan Museum)，还有2014年的维多利亚剧院(Victoria Theater)。

“The reality is that there will be a national agenda, to put itself in the center of the region,” said Ms. Hsu, whose Asia Art Archive has collected about 50,000 documents. “My hope is that the gallery will be a gatekeeper of these works, not merely a keeper. It should not own history, but inspire and enable others to engage with it.”

“事实上，新加坡有一个国家规划，令它跻身地区中心位置，”徐女士说，她的亚洲艺术文献库收藏了大约五万份文件。“我希望美术馆能够做那些作品的守门人，而不仅仅是一个保管者。它不仅仅应当保存历史，而是应当鼓励和帮助其他人参与到这项工作中来。”

More than 600 million people live in the 10 Asian nations roughly south of China and east of India, in what Eugene Tan, the director of the National Gallery, described as “one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world.” Yet much of its art has been overlooked by the West, and many significant works have been confined to private collections, partly a legacy of colonialism.

在中国以南，印度以东的10个亚洲国家里，生活着6亿多人口，国家美术馆馆长陈维德(Eugene Tan)称，这里是“世界上文化多样性最丰富的地区之一”。然而，这里的艺术长期受到西方的忽视，很多重要作品局限在私人收藏的范畴，殖民主义是背后成因之一。

Singapore started collecting Southeast Asian art soon after becoming an independent state in 1965, which it achieved after British colonialism, Japanese wartime occupation and an uneasy two-year stint as part of Malaysia. But until now, this part of the national collection did not have a permanent exhibition space.

新加坡自1965年独立之际，便开始收藏东南亚艺术品，按照英国殖民时期、日本占领时期、作为马来西亚一部分的那动荡两年进行分类。但是直到现在，这部分国家收藏仍然没有一个永久的展示空间。

To create the National Gallery, the old Supreme Court and City Hall buildings were joined by a vaulted glass atrium held up by giant metal trees. Fashionable restaurants line a rooftop garden, while the buildings’ interiors have been left intact: pillars, marble floors, high teak ceilings and walls painted blood red.

为了建造国家美术馆，在旧有的最高法庭与市政大厅建筑旁边建起了一座有玻璃拱顶的天井，由巨大的金属树状结构所支撑。屋顶花园上开了许多时尚餐厅，同时这两栋建筑的内部保持着原貌：柱子、大理石地板、棕色天花板与鲜红色的墙壁。

A domed library is now an art research center, and two empty prison cells stand to remind visitors of the building’s past. (The museum’s promotional video starts with the ominous line: “Criminal masterminds were once sentenced to hang here.”) The “surrender chamber” in City Hall, where Japanese capitulated on Sept. 12, 1945, and where Lee Kuan Yew was sworn in as the first prime minister in 1959, has been artfully preserved.

馆内有一个穹顶图书馆，是它的艺术研究中心，还有两个空囚室，提醒着参观者这栋建筑的过去。美术馆的宣传视频第一句就是阴沉沉的：“犯罪高手以前就是在这儿被判处绞刑的。”市政大厅的“投降室”获得精心保存，1945年9月12日，日本就是在这里投降，1959年，李光耀也是在这里宣誓就职新加坡第一任总理。

The museum has opened with about 1,000 objects on display, divided between two exhibitions. “Between Declarations and Dreams” covers the broader region, while “Siapa Nama Kamu” (which means “What’s your name?” in Malay, one of Singapore’s four official languages, along with English, Chinese and Tamil) is focused on the city-state.

美术馆开放之际，展出了大约1000件展品，分为两个展览。其一是“宣言与梦想之间”(Between Declaration and Dreams)，涉及较为宽泛的地域，其二名为“Siapa Nama Kamu”这是马来语的“你叫什么名字”的意思，马来语、英语、中文及泰米尔语并列为新加坡的四种官方语言，这一展览主要关注新加坡这个城市国家本身。

One of the highlights of the first is “Forest Fire” (1849), the largest known painting by Raden Saleh, a pioneering artist from what was then the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). A bull and tigers tumble ferociously over each other in a large oil that was originally a gift to King William III of the Netherlands.

“宣言和梦想之间”展上，最引人关注的展品之一要算是《森林之火》(Forest Fire，1849)，这是荷属东印度群岛（今印度尼西亚）前卫艺术家拉登·萨尔(Raden Saleh)已知的最大作品。这幅巨大的油画上，一只公牛和几只老虎激烈地扭打，这件作品原本是送给荷兰国王威廉三世的礼物。

“Because of the area’s colonial history, we had to cast our eyes beyond this region,” Lisa Horikawa, another senior curator at the gallery, said of the difficulties of retrieving works like “Forest Fire” from private collections. She added that “Forest Fire” required conservation, and that it took three years to bring it to Singapore from Europe.

“由于这个地区的殖民史，我们必须让视野超越地域的界限，”美术馆的另一位自身策展人丽莎·崛川( Lisa Horikawa，音译)谈起从私人收藏家手中购回《森林之火》之类作品的困难。她还说，《森林之火》的购回经历了谈判，美术馆花费三年时间才把它从欧洲带回新加坡。

Indeed, the gallery relied heavily on loans for its inaugural shows. One high-profile loan is “Put Down Your Whip,” an oil that the Chinese artist Xu Beihong painted in Singapore in 1939, on the cusp of World War II in the Pacific. It shows the actress Wang Ying as a young woman who had escaped Japanese occupation. The painting disappeared from public view in the 1950s and only re-emerged in 2007, when it was acquired by an anonymous buyer for $9.2 million at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong, a record high price for a Chinese painting at the time.

事实上，美术馆为几场开幕展借来了大量展品。比如著名的《放下你的鞭子》，这是中国画家徐悲鸿1939年在新加坡创作的，时值“二战”战火席卷太平洋之际。画面上，女演员王莹饰演一个逃出日占区的年轻女子。这幅画自从20世纪50年代就消失在公众视野之内，直至2007年才重新出现，被一位匿名买家以920万美元在香港苏富比买下，创造了当时中国油画的拍卖纪录。

Many works in the collection reveal cross-cultural influences between the West and Southeast Asia. Some are unabashedly pro-colonialist, like “Spain and the Philippines” (1884) by Juan Luna, a Filipino artist who exhibited his work in Europe. It depicts two women in draped robes, with “Spain” leading the “Philippines” up a flight of flower-strewn stairs into, presumably, the golden dawn of Western enlightenment.

展览中有不少作品展现了西方与东南亚之间的跨文化影响。有些作品赤裸裸地赞美殖民者，比如菲律宾艺术家胡安·卢纳(Juan Luna)于1884年创作的《西班牙与菲律宾》(Spain and the Philippines)，他曾在欧洲展出自己的作品。画面上，两个女人穿着长袍，“西班牙”领导着“菲律宾”走上布满鲜花的阶梯，可能是要走进西方启蒙的黄金黎明。

Vietnamese works combine French Impressionist influences and traditional materials like silk and lacquer. Landscapes by the Indonesian artist Wakidi evoke the glowing pastel tones of Monet.

越南作品把法国印象主义影响与本地的丝绸与漆器质材结合起来。印度尼西亚艺术家瓦吉迪(Wakidi)笔下的风景画令人想起莫奈闪光的淡彩色调。

Also of note is a small 1940s self-portrait by Georgette Chen, a cosmopolitan Singaporean painter who grew up in Paris and New York before returning to Asia. “Singapore was inherently global, long before we talked about global art,” said Mr. Mustafa, the senior curator.

值得一提的还有新加坡都市画家张荔英(Georgette Chen)于20世纪40年代创作的一副小小的自画像，她在巴黎和纽约长大，之后回到亚洲。“早在我们讨论全球艺术之前，新加坡就一直是全球化的，”资深策展人穆斯塔法先生说。

Starting in the 1950s, the tone becomes darker, as local artists focus on social turmoil. “For the younger generation of artists, the romanticized image of the region was not sufficient,” he said.

从20世纪50年代起，作品的调子开始变得阴沉，本地艺术家开始关注社会的动荡。“对于年轻一代艺术家来说，把本地的想像浪漫化已经不够了，”他说。

Two works important to the city-state’s identity are “Epic Poem of Malaya” (1955) and “National Language Class” (1959) by the Singaporean artist Chua Mia Tee. Both show a local teacher or speaker inspiring groups of youth. Such images marked “the end of colonialism and the beginnings of social realism,” said Mr. Tan, the gallery’s director.

展览中，新加坡艺术家蔡名智(Chua Mia Tee)的两幅作品对这个城市国家的身份显得尤为重要。一幅是1955年的《马来亚史诗》(Epic Poem of Malaya)，一幅是1959年的《语文课》(National Language Class)。两张画上，都是一个本地老师或演讲者，鼓励年轻的人们。这样的画面标志着“殖民主义的终结与社会现实主义的开始”，陈馆长说。

A gallery that focuses on the Vietnam War has a wall of 17 illustrations by artists sent into the field by the North Vietnamese Army. Facing them is Le Huy Tiep’s “Blood of War,” from 1972, in which corpses lie at the feet of a blindfolded man, while a mother clutches a naked child. The tips of machine guns are visible at the edge of the frame.

馆中有一处越南战争主题的画廊，一面墙上陈列着17幅作品，均出自被北越军队送上战场的艺术家作品之手。对面是画家Le Huy Tiep于1972年创作的《战争之血》(Blood of War)，画面上有一个被蒙住双眼的男人，他脚下都是尸体，还有一个母亲紧紧抱着赤裸的孩子，画面边缘可以看到机关枪的枪口。

Over the next year, the National Gallery Singapore will be working with overseas institutions to put Southeast Asian art into a global context. Chinese museums will contribute to an exhibit space for the artist Wu Guanzhong. The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris will lend about 100 works to a joint exhibition next spring, and “Arts and Empire,” a retrospective of British colonialism at Tate Britain, will move to Singapore next October.

明年，新加坡美术馆将和海外机构合作，把东南亚艺术放在全球语境之下。若干中国艺术馆将为吴冠中作品展提供作品。巴黎的蓬皮杜艺术中心将在明年春天借出100幅左右的作品，举办联展。英国泰特美术馆的“艺术与帝国”英国殖民艺术回顾展将在明年10月移师新加坡。

Mr. Tan said the rise of a new generation in Singapore, less focused on the city-state’s emergence and eager to be part of the larger world, added urgency to displaying art from the city-state and its surrounding region.

陈先生说，新加坡崛起的新一代艺术家不太关心新加坡的兴起，更渴望参与到更广大的世界中去，因此展出新加坡与周边地区的艺术品，就显得更为迫切。

“I think I only went to one museum as a kid,” he said, “and that was on a school trip. Singapore is a very different place now. And having a permanent space for our collection is a game changer.”

“我小时候好像只去过一个博物馆，”他说，“是学校组织的集体活动。如今的新加坡已经完全不同了。我们的收藏能拥有一处永久展出空间，这是改变行业的大事。”