I won’t claim the ranching town of Bowie, Texas to be the cultural center of the universe, but it is where we first met Leng Tshua, Chief Executive Officer of the contemporary Singapore Art Museum (SAM). He was visiting a former colleague who happens to be one of our Bowie friends.

We were tickled to receive an invitation from Tshua to visit his museum while in Singapore earlier this week. Now if you know us well, you know that Hank and I are not usually first in line at ultra-contemporary art exhibits. But seeing the current exhibit at SAM through Tshua’s eyes may change that.

Mounted to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the modern nation of Singapore (August 9, 1965), the exhibit fills five large spaces. Each section is devoted to one of the qualities that have defined the vision of today’s Singapore: Justice, Equality, Democracy, Progress, and Peace.

The first room was jarring: cloudy metallic walls received glaring images of life-sized human figures, many distorted by physical deformity or odd costumery. The images flashed disturbingly from the blinding beams of overhead cameras. The artist Ho Tzu Nyen was asking hard questions in this video installation called No Man: For whom is Justice designed? Is it justly applied? Who merits inclusion in a “just society”? The sound track accompanying the installation jolted our ears. In our extreme jet-lagged state, we were overwhelmed by it.

We moved then to a space where the walls were covered in glistening copper pipes, arranged in irregular, but harmonious configurations along the walls. Zulkifle Mahmod installation Raising Spirits and Restoring Souls came to life when solenoid–driven cylinders tap the pipes to relay the metric pattern of a key line in Singapore’s national anthem: “Sama-sama menuju bahagia” (Let us progress towards happiness together). The pipes themselves, and their geometric patterns, were beautiful to behold, yet disconcerting in their openness and irregularity.

Then we walked into a large the exhibit mounted by Matthew Ngui’s entitledEvery Point of View. Broad white PCV pipes stood vertically at nearly ceiling height. Texts were inscribed onto them but the open arrangement of the pipes meant that words were separated. Indeed individual letters were split apart. The eye could not make sense of the messages.

But, in an ingenious twist, strategically placed cameras “gathered” up the symbols and delivered them to projectors along a side wall. There one could read at leisure the full message of each text, a varied collection of statements about democracy, some by famous figures and others by ordinary citizens of Singapore. Yet, in another twist, these “coherent” messages would be interrupted when any visitor to the museum walked through the maze of pipes. His or her body broke the flow of text, just as our individual concepts and dissonances interrupt the flow of democratic ideals.

Marvelous. That’s what it was. Purely marvelous.

The fourth exhibit was entitled Of Equal Measure. It showcased the work of a cultural pioneer, Singporean art historian T. K. Sabapathy. Under any circumstance, his prolific production of articles, books, and catalogues would be staggering. But he wrote all of this in years when Singapore was focused solely on business and technology. The arts? They fell outside of the national priorities at that point. There were no high-level art schools or conservatories yet. (In fact, that’s what led Leng Tshua to come to the U.S. in the 1980s to pursue a degree in music.)

The seemingly endless line of publications by this visionary scholar, now in his 80s, were arranged in crisp lines across multiple walls. They remind the viewer that one man’s efforts can trump a phalanx of researchers working in an easier time or place. Aim high. Then aim higher. Count not the costs but continue with the vision. That was the message I took away from Of Equal Measure.

Finally, in the last hall, we were dazzled by Suzann Victor’s Bloodline of Peace. Imagine an oblong quilt hung across rods from a ceiling. Envision this quilt as long enough to drape in several gentle folds across a very large space. But the quilt is made of thin, translucent silver squares that are actually Fresnel camera lenses held together by tiny pins. And in the center of each lens is a dried drop of blood. The blood was donated from ten Singaporeans. These drops represent the sacrifice, the striving, the hopes and dreams of building a nation that can live in Peace.

SAM occupies an historic former home of the Catholic boys’ school, St. Joseph’s Institution, whose restored white corridors and courtyards sparkle at every turn. The contrast of this graceful structure with the mirrored high-rises makes yet another striking impression. If a single visit can imprint the spirit of Singapore on a person, this one did!