TRIBUTE ABDUL - Perdana Library

HAJI ABDUL MUBIN SHEPPARD
The Art Gallery houses the products of only one of the
Arts, but in the "Hall of the Muses" - (the Museum) - all the
Arts can expect to find a place, and so it had been, until a
misdirected stick of Allied bombs destroyed the Kuala Lumpur
Museum in March 1945. In the next fourteen years the Muses
remained homeless and patronless but in 1959 Tunku Abdul
Rahman directed that plans should be prepared for a new
National Museum. Later the same year he decided that the
building should be of Malay design and he entrusted the work
to a Malayan architect who was also a talented artist. Tunku
Abdul Rahman has since taken a close interest in every phase
of the planning and decoration of the Museum and in the preparation
of its displays.
What a paragon of philosophic virtues emerges from this
brief survey. Pesta, Negara-ku, New Orders of Chivalry, the
National Art Gallery and the National Museum,-—each of these
was a notable achievement, yet all have been the work of an
intensely busy National Leader, who has never allowed the
turmoil of the twentieth century to quench his unique devotion
to the Arts. A Leader, moreover, who has secured much of
his success by the soft music of a famous smile, which itself
evokes virtue in others.
By observing the music of this Prince the whole world
knows Ihe character of his Virtue.
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