Today’s episode takes us back to the early 20th century in Vietnam. Curator Phoebe Scott leads listeners into the Golden Age of the first group of students at the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine. Through their challenges and achievements in the context of the colonized country; and their journey seeking their artistic voice in Europe as Asian diaspora artists.

Phoebe Scott is a curator at the National Gallery Singapore, where she curated the exhibition Radiant Material: A Dialogue in Vietnamese Lacquer Painting (2017) and co-curated Reframing Modernism: Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond (2016), in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou. Phoebe was also a co-curator of the one of the inaugural exhibitions of National Gallery Singapore, Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia since the 19th Century (2015). 

Prior to joining the National Gallery, Phoebe completed her Ph.D. on the subject of modern Vietnamese art, and she has written a number of texts on the subject. She is currently developing her research into a monograph on artists of the École des beaux-arts de l’Indochine. Phoebe is also an adjunct lecturer in art history at the National University of Singapore.