State of the Arts: May 23 to 30

SINGAPORE — Children are in the limelight this week. The National Heritage Board’s annual Children’s Season kicked off today across 19 museums. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education announced that more secondary schools would be offering Enhanced Art and Music Programmes next year to give students more opportunities to take up art and music as an academic subject for the O-Levels.

Meanwhile, the Eric Khoo-directed music video for this year’s National Day Parade theme song, written by Dick Lee, was unveiled, while Electrico frontman Dave Tan announced that he would be working on a movie about Zouk’s iconic Mambo Jambo nights, titled Blame It On The Boogie. Singapore’s oldest theatre group The Stage Club celebrated its 70th anniversary with a special production and exhibition.

The country’s international salvo isn’t over yet. A food market and a showcase of 50 Singapore films will be among the events at the Singapore Festival in France, which will wrap up next month, while the second leg of Singapore: Inside Out, which will take place in London, will also feature musicians like Pleasantry, Charlie Lim and Gentle Bones. The private art museum Singapore Pinacotheque de Paris, which is at Fort Canning Centre, opens today. Finally, it was revealed that the National Arts Council had withdrawn its publishing grant for Sonny Liew’s graphic novel The Art Of Charlie Chan Hock Chye because of “sensitive content” earlier this week. MAYO MARTIN