National Museum of Singapore

The National Museum of Singapore is the oldest museum in Singapore. Its history dates back to 1849, when it was started as a section of a library at Singapore Institution and called the Raffles Library and Museum. After several relocations, in 1887 it moved to its permanent site at Stamford Road in the Museum Planning Area.

The museum focuses on exhibits related to the history of Singapore. It is one of four national museums in the country, the other three being the two Asian Civilisations Museums at Empress Place Building and Old Tao Nan School, and the Singapore Art Museum. It was named the National Museum of Singapore in 1965; between 1993 and March 2006, it was known as the Singapore History Museum.

The National Museum of Singapore underwent a three-and-a-half-year restoration and reopened on 2 December 2006, with the official reopening by former President of Singapore S. R. Nathan and the Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts taking place on 7 December 2006. The Singapore History Gallery opened on 8 December of the same year.

The museum will have a permanent 2,800 m² gallery space at the new glass clad building within a glass rotunda known as the Singapore History Gallery. It will feature the history of Singapore from the 14th century in a story-telling approach. Images and film can be projected on its 15-metre high cylindrical walls. There will be a narration of the history and display of artistic expressions of the history.

A ramp spiral in the new building leads down to an exhibition space holding the nation's treasures which includes the Singapore Stone and 14th century gold ornaments unearthed from nearby Fort Canning Hill in 1928. There will be a 250-seat auditorium known as The Mesh for talks, lectures and workshops for the young and old at the Fort Canning entrance. It will have retail facilities as well as a café and a restaurant at the Stamford Road block of the building. Elevators and escalators have been constructed at the museum with access for the disabled. An area will feature classrooms and outreach programmes. A vehicular entrance can be accessed by Fort Canning Road at the new building. In the basement, there is a column-free 1,200 m² exhibition gallery for temporary exhibits. It has insulated walls without windows and the space is climatically controlled to protect the exhibits from light and heat or humidity changes.

A resource centre will be housed in the building which will contain old books, photographs, negatives and stamps for public viewing. It had been fitted with Wireless@SG items.
Artifacts

The museum used to house a vast collection of zoological items, but were transferred to the National University of Singapore (NUS) and other museums in the Commonwealth. It currently has eleven precious artefacts, namely the Singapore Stone, the Gold Ornaments of the Sacred Hill from East Java, Dagguerreotype of Singapore Town which was one of the earliest photographs of Singapore, the will of Munshi Abdullah, the portrait of Frank Athelstane Swettenham, the hearse of Tan Jiak Kim, a Peranakan coffin cover, the mace of the City of Singapore commemorating King George VI's raising of the island's status to a city in 1951, the Xin Sai Le puppet stage, William Farquhar's drawings of flora and fauna and the portrait of Shenton Thomas, who was the former governor of Singapore. Rocks from the nearby Fort Canning Hill were used to create two sculptures commissioned from Cultural Medallion-winner Han Sai Por.

Unlike countries such as South Korea or Japan, there is no central authority which maintains and awards a national treasure status for these artifacts. The National Museum of Singapore, being the custodian of most of these "national treasures" and the National Heritage Board being the coordinating authority of history in Singapore have at different times, came up with different lists.
Architecture
The Concourse of the museum, an amalgamation between Classicism & Modernism.

National Museum was designed in Neo-Palladian and Renaissance style and consists of two rectangular parallel blocks, with a dome at the front of the building. Its architects were Henry McCallum who designed the original version and J.F. McNair who designed the scaled down version of the building. The building has two rotundas, a new glass-clad rotunda at the rear area of the building. Its glass rotunda is a cylindrical shaped building which is made up of two drums, with the outer one made of glass which sheaths an inner one made of wire mesh. Black out curtains has the same length of the inner drum with images projected on sixteen video projectors in the day. The curtains are drawn after sunset, and projection can be beamed out through the glass to get a view of the city. Coats of arms are found on the building's front.

The redeveloped building was designed by local W Architects with the glass-clad rotunda designed inspired by Chinese American I.M. Pei. The chief design consultant was Mok Wei Wei from W Architects, who was appointed in June 2004 and modified the designs of glass rotunda and the atrium between the two buildings. The new glass clad building was designed such that the old building would still be the centrepiece of the museum. A six-metre gap exists between the back of the main museum building and its new annexe as conservation guidelines do not allow old and new buildings to be directly connected. In the gallery theatre, bricks are designed in a herringbone brick pattern, which helps to control the echoes and acoustics in the space. Initially, the designers planned to use bricks from the old National Library building, but the cost was too expensive. Black concrete flooring was used for the new block instead of grey granite flooring as initially planned.