Ms. Chor Lin Lee
Lee Chor Lin began her museum career in 1985 as curator for Southeast Asian collection of
the National Museum of Singapore, and was senior curator at the Asian Civilisations
Museum (1993 – 2003). She was director of the National Museum Singapore (2003-2013) and
CEO, Arts House Limited between 2013 and 2016, running the Singapore International
Festival of Arts and three art centres for the National Arts Council. Lee was a member of the
advisory committee for the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, which opened in 2021.
APEC Bogor 1994 batik shirt by Iwan Tirta worn by then Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong (Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong collection; photo courtesy of the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore)
A specialist on Southeast Asian and Chinese textiles, amongst other subjects in Asian art, Lee’s publications on textiles and fashion include Ancestral Ships: Fabric Impressions of Old Lampung Culture, Sacred Threads: Ceremonial Textiles of Southeast Asia, Power Dressing: Textiles for Rulers and Priests, chapters on Cheongsam and the sarong kebaya in the Berg Encyclopaedia of World Dress and Fashion for South Asia and Southeast Asia, and In the Mood for Cheongsam. More recently, Lee was commissioned by the ACM to curate Batik Kita: Dressing in Port Cities, in 2022. Her latest title, Batik: Makers and Wearers, was published in July 2024.
Students of Victoria High of Singapore at the seaside, circa 1957 (Photo courtesy of Rossman Ithnain)
MIB - Men in Batik
Perhaps the least discussed aspect of Southeast Asian sartorial history, batik shirts are today a standard wear for men in the island world of Southeast Asia – Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. This paper is one of the first attempts to trace the history of batik shirts – how, by breaching a fundamental dress code, the traditional Javanese fabric normally confined to the lower part of the body came to ascend to take over the upper torso – and to rethink the circumstances of its emergence, not just as an element of fashion, but a silhouette of the social circumstances conjured up by the region’s post-War independence movements, nationalist awakenings, economic revitalization, as well as the moulding of a new collective identity, at least for the working male demography.