Ho Ching, Michelle Obama attend arts event at Washington museum

SINGAPORE — Madam Ho Ching and US first lady Michelle Obama attended a cultural event intended to highlight arts education in Washington, DC, on Tuesday (Aug 2). The event was held at the National Gallery of Art in the morning as their husbands, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and US President Barack Obama, met for bilateral talks at the White House.

Accompanied by Mr Earl A Powell III, director of the museum, the leaders’ wives toured the museum, stopping at an 1860 oil portrait of Abraham Lincoln, the Shaw Memorial and landscape paintings. Of the Lincoln portrait, Mr Powell said it was the last portrait done of the late US President before he grew a beard.

Madam Ho and Mrs Obama then watched students from an American arts programme perform. Turnaround Arts was launched during Mr Obama’s presidency and helps fund arts education at low-performing schools as a way to increase student engagement. 

The arts programme is also a pet project of Mrs Obama, who is the honorary chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. “We need to keep on expanding the Turnaround Arts Programme, no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office next year,” she said in May.

Mrs Obama wore a yellow, applique floral dress, while Madam Ho was in a black and gold lace pantsuit.