Chief Curator Patrick Flores Exits National Gallery Singapore in Leadership Shake-Up

By Daniel Okafor

The National Gallery Singapore is losing its chief curator and its assistant chief executive in December, according to a report in The Straits Times. Chief curator Patrick Flores and assistant chief executive Chris Lee will both step down that month, coinciding with the departure of CEO Eugene Tan. That makes three senior exits at one institution in a single season.

The reshuffle follows last month's announcement that Chng Hak-Peng will take over Eugene Tan's role as CEO of the National Gallery Singapore. The museum's leadership bench is, to put it mildly, being rebuilt.

Who is leaving, and when?

• Patrick Flores, chief curator, leaves in December. He was the first person to hold the relatively new chief curator title, which he took up in 2024. The Gallery told The Straits Times he plans to return to his native Philippines.
• Chris Lee, assistant chief executive, leaves after a decade at the museum. He joined as chief marketing officer before rising to assistant CEO.
• Eugene Tan, CEO, departs in December. He ran the Singapore Art Museum simultaneously and will keep that second job into the new year.

What happens to the curator's role?

Chng told The Straits Times that the National Gallery's programming would continue as planned. He did not confirm details about the leadership search, nor whether the chief curator position — barely a year old — will remain part of the museum's structure at all.

That silence is the story. A role created in 2024 could vanish with its first occupant, and the museum hasn't said otherwise.

Why Flores matters

Flores arrives at his exit with one of the stronger curatorial records in Southeast Asia. He curated the Philippines Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale (the national pavilions where countries present their artists) and the Taiwan Pavilion at the 2022 edition. He served as artistic director of the Singapore Biennale at the Singapore Art Museum in 2019–20.

His exhibitions at the National Gallery include "Figuring a Scene," "Elusive Edge: Philippine Abstract Forms," and "Ties of History: Art in Southeast Asia." Losing a curator who has twice worked the Venice circuit — and once directed Singapore's own biennale — is not a routine staffing note.

Where is Chris Lee going?

Lee's next chapter is concrete. In mid-December he starts as chief executive of Medan Pasar Realty, the group behind efforts to revitalize a historic market neighborhood in downtown Kuala Lumpur. He will also run Muara Arts, a nonprofit gallery and theater anchoring that redevelopment project.

In other words: one departure leaves the museum world, one leaves the country entirely.

Do the two museums stay linked?

Eugene Tan's dual mandate ends in December, but the institutions he oversaw say the partnership survives him. In a statement last month on the leadership changes at NGS (the National Gallery Singapore) and SAM, both confirmed they will continue to collaborate and share resources as they have in the past.

Whether that collaboration holds with two new chiefs on opposite sides of the partnership — Chng at the Gallery, Tan remaining at SAM — will be the first test of the new arrangement. The museum has promised continuity in programming. December will tell us how much of the institution's brain trust is leaving on the same plane.