On April 26, 2009, an exhibition featuring the ink paintings and calligraphy of Prof Tay Lian Soo and his wife Lee Shi Hua was opened to the public. Organised by SGM, the exhibition which is held at Wisma Kebudayaan SGM was declared open by Dr Hou Kok Chung, Deputy Minister of Higher Education.

Prof Tay, 69, was born in Johor Bahru and had served in University of Malaya and Chinese University of Hong Kong before joining Southern College, Johor. He is also renowned as a calligrapher and artist and has held exhibitions in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong besides publishing books and art catalogues.

For this exhibition, Prof Tay and his wife have donated over a hundred paintings and calligraphy works to SGM in the spirit of “contributing to the society through art.” The proceeds from the sales of their works will be channelled to the SGM Culture and Education Fund. In the past, Prof Tay had donated many works of calligraphy and ink paintings to SGM.

In conjunction with the exhibition’s opening, Deputy Minister Dr Hou also launched Prof Tay’s new book “Bai Nian Jiang Sima Qian,” a compilation of his lectures on the Chinese historian Sima Qian. This is his third book in the series published by SGM – the first two books were compilation of his lectures on Chinese philosophers Zhuang Zi and Meng Zi respectively. To commemorate this significant occasion, SGM also published an art catalogue of Prof. Tay’s artworks entitled “Bai Nian Shu Hua Si Xuan”.

The works of Prof Tay and Lee Shi Hua were displayed until Sunday, May 3, 2009.