In bid to boost the Night Festival, The National Museum opened its doors, same for all others museums and heritage galleries, to the public free-of-charge. A good move to increase the public's awareness and appreciation of arts in the local scene. After all, arts help cultivate a normally rowdy, pushy, loud-mouth typical Singaporean person's heart, mind and soul.

Then I couldn't help but wonder, before being brought to table of plenty, shouldn't we first be taught the etiquettes of fine-dining?

I spent my weekend strolling about the spacious grounds of various museums. It was heart-warming to see families of young and old spending time together on an outing to the museum. I spotted an old couple studying one of Xu Beihong's Chinese painting and discussing with each other the significance of inscribed calligraphy. The mood was relaxed, the aisles were quiet. Very surreal until... I heard kids yelling and running down the hall. But that's just one. I can live with it. Then came the father shouting at his son for running. Son continued running, father continued yelling profanities, son munched loudly on his crunchy snack, mother... lecturing the sibling. And I rolled my eyes and thought, "Here we go again..."

Tranquility was short-lived, because the museums were soon with more homo sapiens - yelling yakking running screaming and I'm running out of appropriate verbs. I quickly seeked solace in the gallery featuring Alain Fleischer. A little corner room features 'Senstive Screen' - the artist's use of 'analogue and digital photography and film technologies to produce a photographic print derived from moving images'. Sounds out of this world? A video clip was being played repeatingly to demostrate how the art piece was made. So I sat down and watched. People wandered in and out of the room; none stayed long mainly because:

Overheard...
'Eh I don't understand. Go the other side'
'Hur?'
'Hahahaha what is this?'
'Nude pictures is over there lah'

What is the attitude that they have? Are we entering an arts museum expecting to only see beautiful framed pictures which are as simple as an apple in the basket to understand?

Brain of a rocket sciencist I do not have, but I can read what's written on the wall and watch what's played. Explanation as clear as crystal; it's not difficult to understand, unlike the painting of one tiny yellow dot in the middle of a plain blue canvas which used to sit in the gallery below my old office. No description, no explanation whatsoever. That was 'hur?'

Since you are already at the museum, are you expecting to tour the entire area within 15 minutes? If only people could take time to read the introductories on the wall, the art pieces will surely make sense to them.

At the Peranakan Museum, secondary school students were taken on a guided tour through the galleries. I mostly heard them teasing the traditional costumes and something about drama actor Lim Kay Siu resembling 'Harry Potter'. Whatever, it's just gibberish they were gibbering.

All these talks about cultivating the local arts scene makes me wonder if we have placed too high an expection on the locals' level of appreciation for this movement. This takes me to my very first question - before being shown through the galleries, should we be first brought through the basic ettiquettes to be observed and functionalities of various showrooms?

What did the visitors take away with them after leaving the museum? Loads of question marks which double as much before they visited the galleries? Did Georgette Chen leave an impression on them? Do they understand the significance of animal motifs on a bead table cloth when they run around collecting printed stamps on their paper?

How do museums in Europe and America work? Do they face the same kind of crowd? I've never been to these continents so I wonder.