The National Museum of Singapore

The National Museum of Singapore

 

 

 

 

 

 

The National Museum of Singapore (Chinese: 新加坡国家博物院) is a national museum in Singapore and the oldest museum in Singapore. Its history dates back to 1849 when it was started as a section of a library at Singapore Institution. After several relocations, the Museum was relocated to its permanent site at Stamford Road at the Museum Planning Area in 1887.

The Museum is one of the 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. The museum focuses on exhibits related to the history of Singapore. The Museum was named the National Museum of Singapore in 1965. For a brief period between 1993 and March 2006, it was known as the Singapore History Museum, before reverting to its previous name. The Museum underwent a three-and-a-half-year restoration and reopened on 2 December 2006, with the Singapore History Gallery opening on 8 December of the same year.

The revamped National Museum was officially opened by former President of Singapore S R Nathan and Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts Lee Boon Yang on 7 December 2006.

 

 

 

 

The museum was established in 1849 by the then Singapore Institution Committee. It was called the Raffles Library and Museum and it exhibited items of historical and archaeological value in Singapore and Asia. The museum was part of an establishment of a public repository of knowledge of Malayan in a school, museum and library. This objective can be traced to an 1823 meeting called by Sir Stamford Raffles to discuss a revival of the region's cultural heritage. The museum occupied a section of the library of the Singapore Institution, later became the Raffles Institution. In 1874, the museum moved to the Town Hall (now known as the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall). However, due to the growing collection in the museum, it moved back to the Singapore Institution in 1876 situated at the new wing of the institution.

The Raffles Library and Museum later moved to Stamford Road in a new building that was commissioned by the colonial government in 1882. The museum was officially opened on 12 October 1887 which also marked the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The library was referred to by the locals in Malay as Rumah Kitab (house of books) or Tempat Kitab (place of books). The museum was designed by Sir Henry McCallum but a scaled down version was used as the Colonial Office rejected the initial proposal, Major J.F. McNair co-designed the later vrsion.

In its early years, the museum was well known for its zoological and ethnographic collections of Southeast Asia especially Malaya and British Borneo before the World War II. The museum was a centre of research and knowledge, directors and curators were by and specialists of good research accomplishments including zoologists Richard Hanitsch, John Moulton, Cecil Boden Kloss, Frederick Chasen and anthropologists HD Collings and Gibson-Hill who were also interested in ornithology, Malay history, ethnography and photography. The museum was the seat of the editorial office of the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, it was visited by scholars who were en route to their trips to Malaya and Indonesia. The collections included a selection of northern Nias objects from the field trips of Elio Modigliani, as well as the basketwork gifted by Dr William Abbott, who collected them during the 1900s for the United States National Museum, later the Smithsonian Institution.

Extensions were carried out in 1906, 1916, 1926 and 1934 due to the inadequate space for the growing number of times ti. L and books. During the Japanese Occupation, the place was left intact by the Japanese occupying army due to the reputation of its Raffles collection and research integrity. The museum split from the library, with the latter forming the National Library adjacent to the museum building in 1960 which was demolished and relocated to Victoria Street in 2005, the former was housed in the Stamford Road building.

After Singapore's independence in 1965, the museum focused its collection to nation-building and the history of Singapore and was renamed the National Museum. Its zoological collections was moved to the biology department of the National University of Singapore and to some museums such as in Kolkata in India and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. This all happened in 1969. Its most iconic artefact was the skeleton of a blue whale found in Port Dickson in 1893 and was displayed from 1903 to 1969. The museum then featured exhibits on history, ethnology and arts of Singapore and the region.

Hawpar Group donated a jade collection in January 1980. Restoration works of the building were carried out in 1985 which included a repainting of the building and restoring some of the distinctive features. After restoration, the museum was gazetted as a national monument on 14 February 1992. The museum came under the management of the National Heritage Board in 1993 and was renamed the Singapore History Museum becoming the flagship of the four national museums in Singapore. The building was closed in April 2003 for extension and restoration works and the museum was temporarily relocated to Riverside Point where an exhibition known as Rivertales was displayed.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

출처 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Singapore