There are four permanent collections; the South and Southeast Asian Collection, the Lee Kong Chian Collection, the Ng Eng Teng Collection and the Straits Chinese Collection (located at NUS Baba House). A selection of these works may be accessed through the Museum’s Collections Online database.
“Methods and approaches shape the students’ learning experience, and for a University, this is necessary and purposeful. The Museum may complement, but there must be room for the counter-intuitive, dynamics centred around play, productive ambiguity, the heuristic. Let’s have such spaces.”
Ahmad Mashadi
Head of NUS Museum
As a museum, its core practice is to collect, preserve, interpret and display its artefacts. As it resides within a university context, it occupies a unique position in the roundtable of Singapore’s museums and galleries – subjected to and liberated by the rigours and freedom of academia, and characterised by collaborative approaches in its curatorial practice.
With a mission to actively facilitate intellectual and cultural life within and beyond the University, it takes a sustained and accumulative approach towards research and exhibitionary outcomes that facilitate multiple entry points and disciplinary interests.
Across its nine galleries and award-winning prep-room, relevant and compelling exhibitions with an emphasis on Southeast Asian art and culture are presented year-round. The contents of these exhibitions are drawn from the Museum’s permanent collections, as well as from both partners and artists who are external to the University.
While diverse in execution and content, exhibitions at NUS Museum are unanimous in their aims to facilitate the production, reception, and preservation of knowledge through curatorial practice and collections development. Each exhibition is carefully curated as a starting point from which audiences can bring their own perspectives and interpretations to bear on its inquiry.
Exhibitions are augmented with a suite of programmes such as lectures, panel discussions, film screenings, workshops and walking tours to explore and extend its discourse, generate alternative perspectives, or even further collaborations.
Collaborators in NUS Museum’s extensive programmes include faculty drawn from across the University, art practitioners, filmmakers, researchers, and often the exhibited artists themselves. These complementary programmes provide unique insights that draw from or intersect with the exhibitions while adding additional dimensions that connect to ongoing discussions within the NUS community and beyond.
Visit the NUS Museum website for more information on the facility and the collections.
Supporting the Museum’s rolling exhibition and programming schedule are a wide range of resources that are available to students, faculty and the public.
Details on current exhibitions and events at NUS Museum are available in the online calendar.
Contact the Museum team for more information on the facility, the collections and programming.
