Honor Harger Curates First-Ever SE Asia Da Vinci Exhibit

It was a long, emotional night for ArtScience Museum executive director New Zealand-born Honor Harger. She was waiting eagerly for the arrival of Leonardo da Vinci’s works, which had travelled a long way to Singapore from their home, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, a prestigious cultural institution in Milan, Italy.

This is the first time the Renaissance man’s original drawings and writings have come to South East Asia. A total of 26 folios from his largest illustrated manuscript, the Codex Atlanticus, and six paintings modelled after his classic works, will be on display at the museum’s new show, Da Vinci: Shaping The Future.

Harger said: “You can only bring a Leonardo da Vinci to an entire region for the first time, once. And to be there to document that moment when the works touched down was pretty special. It was emotional.”

Harger was previously artistic director at Lighthouse, a digital culture agency in the United Kingdom that supports, commissions and shows work by artists and film-makers.

Original article by Huang Lijie, The Straits Times, November 14, 2014.