The Year of the Fire Horse is said to be intoxicatingly energetic—full of chaos and transformation, inciting impulsiveness in some, while others dress up their gambles as strategy. In Singapore, when the art community wasn’t grumbling about its own homegrown biennial, it found fresh indignation elsewhere. This time, it was the tourism board’s decision to fly celebrities in for Singapore Art Week. The chosen trio: American pop singer Nick Jonas, Chinese actress Zhu Zhu, and Korean starlet Ha Ji-Won. Dutifully escorted around ART SG, the National Gallery Singapore, and the New Bahru precinct, they posed, peered, and posted. Many observers were left wondering why and, more pressingly, how much these resolutely mainstream figures were paid to upload their carefully choreographed Instagram appreciations of culture in the Lion City.

Generating more chatter were museum heavyweights parachuting in, foremost among them the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Its charismatic director, Michael Govan, hosted a discreet lunch on the exclusive island of Sentosa, where he unveiled a presentation on LACMA’s eye-watering USD 750 million transformation to a select circle of potential donors from Southeast Asia. With the revamp scheduled to open this year, one couldn’t help but wonder if the American institution was still scanning the room to help plug a budget that already borders on the heroic.