Asian Civilisations Museum/National Museum [Singapore 2018]

It wouldn’t be a vacation with me without at least one museum. As it turns out, we visited two, on separate days. The first was the Asian Civilisations Museum, featuring art and items from Asian civilizations. Probably the most unique exhibit/collection in this museum is the hundreds of bowls from the Tang Shipwreck. The ship was an Arabian dhow sailing from China on its way back to Iraq/Iran around 830 A.D., but was found in 1998 off the shore of Indonesia. Both the ship and the cargo were well-preserved, protected by sediment. The ship is unusual not only for surviving over a millennium underwater, but also because it was sewn together. The cargo, which included 70,000 Tang dynasty ceramic pieces, survived because many of the bowls were nestled in tight spirals inside larger storage jars, then further cushioned with straw.

Bowls from the Tang Shipwreck

The rest of the museum contains other ceramics from various time periods, some paintings, furniture, musical instruments, and Buddhistic and Taoist statuary. It’s not a huge museum, and not my favorite, but it was a good change from some of our other activities, and there’s a decent variety of items in their exhibits. Worth going if you want something quieter/less touristy than the zoo or Sentosa, or if you’re a pottery aficionado.

Asian Civilisations Museum

Near the end of our trip, we met up with one of my aunts/uncle and a cousin and his family. We had lunch together, then went to the National Museum of Singapore. The main part of the museum on the first floor covers Singapore’s history, from its existence as a trading port, to British colonization, its role in WWII1, the merger with Malaysia, and its subsequent independence. They had various artifacts throughout the exhibit, ranging from a bell cast in Paul Revere’s foundry and war documents to an opium bed and a mid-century kitchen. Even though I was dragged through a decent portion of this exhibit by my niece, I thought it was interesting and educational, especially since I didn’t grow up in Singapore, and the last time I was in the country I was still learning arithmetic and the parts of speech.

On the second floor, other exhibits include the Story of the Forest, Surviving Syonan, and Voices of Singapore. Story of the Forest is kind of cool – you start at the top of the exhibit, then walk down a spiral ramp. As you walk downward, the walls are video screens with moving forest scenes on them that are inspired by/digitized versions of drawings from a museum collection. Surviving Syonan covers Singapore during Japanese occupation in WWII¹, and Voices of Singapore is about fine and performing arts in Singapore. They have posters for orchestra concerts and TV shows from the 70s, and a theater where the seats are cars. We saw one other exhibit about fashion, then we ran out of time. Overall, I think I liked the National Museum a little better than the Asian Civilisations Museum. I’m not a huge art person, and the National Museum was generally more informative. Again, though, this museum was much quieter than, say, Universal Studios.

Clockwise from top left: fashion, Story of the Forest, National Museum mini-façade, 70s concert posters

¹More on this in a later post.