National Gallery Singapore announced its international partnership strategy to kick off curatorial collaborations with leading art institutions worldwide. The international collaborative framework will complement the Gallery’s research under its special exhibition series, and strengthen the Gallery’s presentation of the art histories of Singapore and Southeast Asia within a global context.

The first major collaboration will be with Centre Pompidou, which houses one of the most important modern and contemporary art collections in the world. The two parties will ink an exhibition agreement today in Paris, building on the strong cultural relations between Singapore and France.

Sam Tan, Singapore’s Minister of State for the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, said,

“This collaboration between Singapore’s National Gallery and France’s Centre Pompidou will allow our art practitioners in both countries to engage and share expertise in the arts. We hope that through this collaboration with Centre Pompidou, our two institutions will find ways to share the arts with many more people in France and Singapore.”

Slated for the second quarter of 2016, the co-curated exhibition about reframing modernism will examine the relationship between the art from Singapore, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the world.

In addition to Centre Pompidou in France, National Gallery Singapore will introduce over the next year partners to collaborate on new exhibitions or loans, and to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and expertise. The list includes regional institutions from Thailand and Vietnam, and others from China, Japan, and The Netherlands.

The inaugural special exhibition will be co-curated by National Gallery Singapore Director Eugene Tan and his team Lisa Horikawa and Phoebe Scott, together with the Deputy Director of the Centre Pompidou’s National Museum of Modern Art, Catherine David and curator Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov. Presented by Asia’s leading communications group Singtel, the exhibition will offer new perspectives to current understandings of modernism by using Southeast Asia as new point of reference, as well as provide a reframing of the development of modernism in the 20th century in a global context.

The exhibition, specially curated for Singapore, will be staged at the Singtel Special Exhibition Gallery and is expected to showcase more than 200 pieces of artwork, with about half of the works on loan from Centre Pompidou.