History comes forward

Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum opens two new wings on Saturday – and is for the first time staying open for 24 hours. The day’s roundtheclock programmes include an outdoor barbecue, latenight tours and a sleepover in an events room overlooking the river.

The S$25million (Bt631million) makeover of the historic Empress Place building began late last year to increase exhibition space and make the place more inviting.

The 148yearold building was last renovated in 2003, when the museum moved into the building.

The new titaniumclad Riverfront wing and Kwek Hong Png wing add more than 1,300 square metres of space, making for a total of 15,000sqm. 

GreenhilLi, a local architectural firm founded by Nigel Greenhill and Li Sau Kei, designed both wings.

Museum director Alan Chong says the contemporary material and design are in keeping with the prevailing architectural philosophy towards building extensions for heritage monuments. “It makes for cleaner possibilities, and you can still read the old building as an entity,” he says.

“The architecture does not mimic the past,” GreenhilLi says in a statement. “Rather it represents the architecture of the 21st century, while successfully complementing and integrating with the existing building.” The museum’s refurbishing extends to its curatorial direction. While it continues to present the heritage culture of Singapore, the Chinese, Indian and Malay communities are now seen as being interconnected, Chong says.

“Singapore didn’t spring out of nowhere. It emerged alongside other port cities of Asia, and people have often shared religions and ideas through trade, migration and pilgrimage, so we’ve used this as a way of curating our new galleries.”

This change is seen in the galleries opening this weekend – the Khoo Teck Puat Gallery, dedicated to the study of the Tang Shipwreck, and the Scholar in Chinese Culture Gallery, which delves into Confucian beliefs.

The threestorey Kwek Hong Png Wing is named after the founder of the business conglomerate Hong Leong Group. The charity arm of the group, the Hong Leong Foundation, donated $5 million to the museum in 2012 to highlight treasures from China.

It’s a titanium cube that appears to be suspended above the ground, an illusion created by the glass atrium on the first floor.

While the third floor is still being prepared, the first floor is dedicated to contemporary art commissions that respond to objects and themes in the museum. “Getting the present to look at the past is a challenge,” Chong says, “but I think contemporary artists can help us see things we might have missed about culture, history or society.”

Inaugurating the wing is the installation “Grains of Thought” by Singapore artist Eng Tow, who says the two ovoid carbonfibre sculptures, covered in acrylic paint, are meant to “draw attention to rice, life and culture”.

The Scholar in Chinese Culture Gallery on the second floor reveals, as senior curator for China Libby Chan, that scholars “also pursued painting, calligraphy, music and literature”. There were also the “scholarofficials”, selected through an exam system to run the government. The image of the scholarly ideal for wealthy overseas Chinese is examined as a means of enhancing social status, whether through scholarly pursuits or simply dressing the part.

The entrance to the Riverfront Wing opens onto a terrace leading down to the Singapore River promenade. It establishes the museum as a key presence along the river and a landmark on the Jubilee Walk to be unveiled later this month. The titaniumclad glass structure also opens the museum’s interiors to a view from the waterfront.

“Previously there was just one entrance and a wing along the river,” Chong says, “but it was completely occupied by a restaurant, and people didn’t associate it with the rest of the museum.”

The extension emphasises the structure’s historic relationship to its location. A former government building, it has stood at the mouth of the river since Singapore’s beginnings in the 19th century.

The Khoo Teck Puat Gallery anchors the singlestorey wing. Its location, steps from the waterfront, resonates with the Tang Shipwreck collection on display. 

The wreck was found off Belitung Island in the Java Sea in 1998 with a cargo of 60,000 ceramics produced in China during the Tang Dynasty, as well as gold and silver objects. The collection was acquired with the help of the estate of the late business tycoon Khoo Teck Puat. 

Southeast Asia curator Stephen Murphy says the wreck underscores the fact that Singapore’s “success as a hub of global trade today has ancient roots”.

Dozens of skylights bathe the artefacts in daylight, allowing their exquisite craftsmanship to shine. The wreck can also be experienced through a virtualreality mobile app that allows the user to step into the shoes of a member of the ship’s crew or those of a marine archaeologist recovering the cargo.