STPI: From pulp dreams to prominence

IT IS hard to believe that STPI is 21 years old – that temporal marker which, for humans, marks full-fledged adulthood. 

When the creative workshop and art gallery was launched in 2002, it was almost immediately beset by problems: Its full-time director, legendary American printmaker Kenneth Tyler – who had lent his name to what was then called the Singapore Tyler Print Institute – stepped down after only four months at the helm, citing “operational disagreements”.

The Singapore Art Museum’s acquisition of over 1,500 works from Tyler’s personal collection of prints, rumoured to have cost around S$10 million, drew outrage from the local arts community. Its members felt that the collection, comprising mostly Western works, prioritised foreign works over local ones, and that the money should have instead been used to help local artists.