Field trip to SAM - Curating Access: tour and dialogue with Erica Lai

​This first of Creative Brain Week Singapore 2026 field trips draws attention to how access and accessibility programming in cultural institutions can contribute to overall equity in brain health in Singapore. From the neurodivergent to the non-sighted, from the young to the aged, Singapore Art Museum has been developing a suite of sensorily inclusive programmes and aesthetically elastic resources to make contemporary art and its appreciation a key catalyst for creative responsiveness and communal resilience.

Erica Lai is currently deputy director of programmes at The Singapore Art Museum, where she exercises her extensive experience in curatorial programming and art education with a commitment to advancing equitable art-making and art-thinking within Singapore, Southeast Asia and Asia.

​During her previous tenure at the National Gallery Singapore, Erica served as assistant director of curatorial programmes, where she led curatorial programming for a diverse range of exhibitions and commissions of Southeast Asian and international artists, including Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America, Liu Kuo-Sung: Experimentation as Method, and Nam June Paik: The Future is Now.

​Erica pioneered Southeast Asia’s first museum-led online learning initiative, leading the development of a MOOC focused on Southeast Asian art. This initiative offered global access to the museum’s collections and provided knowledge on the history, cultural significance and modern evolution of Southeast Asian art. Erica also advocated for and implemented diversity and inclusion programmes for museum staff.