NUS Museum

NUS Museum NUS Museum is the oldest university museum in Singapore with a focus on regional art and culture. Si

4 Permanent Collections:
South and Southeast Asian Collection
Ng Eng Teng Collection
Lee Kong Chian Collection
Straits Chinese Collection (Baba House)

Current Exhibitions:

Radio Malaya: Abridged Conversations About Art

Wishful Images: When Microhistories Take Form

Chinese Ink Works from the Lee Kong Chian Collection of Chinese Art

Archaeology Library

Wartime Artists of Vietnam: Drawings & Po

sters from the Ambassador Dato' N. Parameswaran Collection

Ng Eng Teng: 1+1=1

Biography of a Public Sculpture: Salvaging and Conserving

Resource Gallery

Museum Research Week is back!From 24 to 26 March 2026, NUS Museum invites students, academic staff, and the NUS communit...
18/03/2026

Museum Research Week is back!

From 24 to 26 March 2026, NUS Museum invites students, academic staff, and the NUS community to explore different modes of research produced through engagement with the Museum’s collections. Throughout the week, the various talks, sharings, and tours will shed light on how students, faculty members, research fellows, and museum staff conduct research on and with objects in the NUS Museum’s collection. The Museum Research Week will also launch the open call for the upcoming cycle of Student Research Fellowships for the Academic Year 2026/2027.

Alongside the presentations, there will be all-week displays around the Museum that visitors can engage with, including poster presentations, a mobile museum display and the Research Fellows’ open studio.

Check out link in bio for more info.

Revisit Act 2 of Partial Bodies, Whole Worlds through our programme companion! Through pieces from the Museum’s collecti...
17/03/2026

Revisit Act 2 of Partial Bodies, Whole Worlds through our programme companion! Through pieces from the Museum’s collection and the three short films, this act highlights modes of knowing that emerge from within rather than from methodological and objective observation. What unfolds is not a definitive account of the body, but a sense of how bodily knowledge is shaped by memory, environment, and imagination, and how it continues to exceed attempts to fix or contain it. Check out link in bio for Act 2’s programme companion.

On cover image: Jimmy Ong, Venus Rising with the Moon (1998).

Conceptualised and voiced by Deborah Ann Ng Fong Ling (NUS College & CHS, Class of 2028), Xiong Ran (NUS College & CHS, ...
05/03/2026

Conceptualised and voiced by Deborah Ann Ng Fong Ling (NUS College & CHS, Class of 2028), Xiong Ran (NUS College & CHS, Class of 2026), and Dr Anu Selva-Thomson (Lecturer, CHS, Department of Philosophy), this audio tour is built around a simple idea: that some of the most important questions humans ask are not solved once and for all, but return across centuries, cultures, and everyday life. These include questions about how humans make things endure in a world defined by change, how humans create structures and systems without flattening difference or complexity, and how we make sense of forces – natural, social, emotional – that are larger than us.

Through everyday objects, artefacts, and artworks, the tour offers ways of approaching and interpreting these works rather than fixed answers, inviting participants to look carefully, think alongside the objects, and reflect on what becomes visible, resonates, or resists.

Visit us today to experience the audio tour!

How do we make sense of our bodies in ways that are felt rather than measured?Discover a fresh perspective in this secon...
03/03/2026

How do we make sense of our bodies in ways that are felt rather than measured?

Discover a fresh perspective in this second session of our latest film series Partial Bodies, Whole Worlds, where we reflect on how the human body is seen, remembered, and reimagined through fragmentary forms.

In Act 2: Knowing Otherwise, the series brings together three films that think through different ways of knowing the body. Through dream states, mythologised landscapes, and hybrid beings, the works turn to forms of understanding that are embodied and experienced, drawing on ways of knowing that resist empirical habits of categorisation, measurement, and control.�

📅 Date: 11 Mar 2026
⏰ Timeslots: 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm

Led by student intern Aida Nadirah (CHS, Year 4), Basking in Slowness approaches public art through slowness as method, ...
24/02/2026

Led by student intern Aida Nadirah (CHS, Year 4), Basking in Slowness approaches public art through slowness as method, material, and memory. Moving across the NUS campus, the tour considers how public artworks operate within everyday spaces of transit, labour, and study, and how they hold time differently from gallery-based works. Through the tour, participants will also be invited to slow down, notice overlooked details, and reflect on how learning, memory, and belonging unfold gradually within the university environment.

Register now via link in bio.

*****

Date: 4 March 2026, Wed
Time: 4pm - 5pm
Venue: Starts at NUS Museum, ends in UTown

Conceptualised by student interns Lex Lee (College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS), Year 3) and Zoe Zou (CHS, Year 3), ...
23/02/2026

Conceptualised by student interns Lex Lee (College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS), Year 3) and Zoe Zou (CHS, Year 3), Flashes of Memory approaches archival materials as contingent and subjective practices of remembrance. The tour considers how one may construe the afterlives of a collaboration, performance or exhibition, while exploring archival traces, impulses, and materials that surface within NUS Museum. The tour asks: What is the “archival”? How might we recognise an “archival impulse” in the broad range of materials that document, speculate, or remember?

Register now via link in bio.

*****

Date: 4 March 2026, Wed
Time: 2pm - 3pm
Venue: NUS Museum

Riding into the new year with strength, wisdom, and a little lift-off 🐎✨‘Dragon Horse’ (1997) is a maquette by Ng Eng Te...
16/02/2026

Riding into the new year with strength, wisdom, and a little lift-off 🐎✨

‘Dragon Horse’ (1997) is a maquette by Ng Eng Teng from NUS Museum’s collection that depicts a pair of mythical creatures in flight, gliding above rolling clouds. The dragon horse embodies wisdom alongside strength, while the pairing speaks to unity and cooperation, a quiet reminder of solidarity across different nations in Asia.

In this suspended moment of “flying above the clouds”, we glimpse the resolve to rise beyond obstacles and the shared histories that have shaped our region. As we welcome the Lunar New Year, may we move forward together, clear-minded, strong-hearted, and always ready to soar above the clouds. 🌥️

Thank you for joining us for the first act of Partial Bodies, Whole Worlds!Looking for another way into the films? The p...
10/02/2026

Thank you for joining us for the first act of Partial Bodies, Whole Worlds!

Looking for another way into the films? The programme companion offers a window into reading the films alongside selected artworks, archival materials, and writings from the NUS Museum collection. Swipe to see a recap of the screening! Click the link in our bio to read the programme companion.

Pick up a copy at the next screening and spend some time moving between the films and the gallery. Look out for the next screening this March!

28/01/2026

What happens when we encounter the human body in partial forms?

Partial Bodies, Whole Worlds brings together moving images that reflect on how the human body is seen, remembered, and reimagined through fragmentary forms. Taking its cue from artist Ng Eng Teng’s sustained engagement with the figure - at once expressive, intimate, and pared down - the series spanning three sessions, places his work in conversation with other bodily representations across the Museum’s collection and films across the region.

In Act 1: Figuring the Body, the series examines how the body is approached as a subject of study, projection, and experimentation. Across different moving-image practices, the films consider the body through multiple modes of figuring, anatomical, observational, speculative, and affective.

Rather than presenting the body as a stable or coherent whole, these works treat it as something to be examined, reimagined, and reassembled. The body appears as structure and surface, as a site of sensation and memory, and as a space shaped by lived experience. Shifting between analytical and intuitive approaches, the films foreground the processes through which bodies are known, interpreted, and continually re-figured.

Date: 4 Feb 2026
Timeslots: 12pm, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm
Venue: NUS Museum
Register now via link in bio.

Featured Artworks:

1. Ng Eng Teng, Sitting Pretty (date unknown)
2. Ng Eng Teng, Bottoms Up (date unknown)
3. Ng Eng Teng, Looking Ahead (1987)
4. Ng Eng Teng, Acrobat (1988)
5. Ng Eng Teng, Tubular Couple with One Child (date unknown)
6. Ng Eng Teng, Falling Woman (1977)

“In naming it a commemorative lecture, the Museum, I wish to add, signals confidence in itself as a continually reconsti...
10/12/2025

“In naming it a commemorative lecture, the Museum, I wish to add, signals confidence in itself as a continually reconstituting, integral site for learning and delectation in and for the university. Learning and delectation—these are compelling, desirable assertions.” - Prof T.K. Sabapathy in his opening speech at the NUS Museum Anniversary Lecture 2025.

As part of the Museum’s 70th anniversary celebrations, the NUS Museum Anniversary Lecture returned on 28 November 2025 after a three-year hiatus with its fourth edition titled “The University Museum and the Making of the Collective Modern”.

Delivered by eminent art historian Professor Patrick Flores, the Lecture examined the histories and evolving functions of university museums in the production of knowledge and pedagogy. Drawing on the history of the UP Vargas Museum and the life of its founding donor Jorge Vargas, Prof Flores reflected on how such institutions have transformed over time, particularly in relation to the broader legacies of colonialism, imperialism, and nation-building that have shaped both universities and museums in the region.

We were also honoured to hear from NUS Museum Distinguished Fellow and convenor of the Series, Adjunct Professor T.K. Sabapathy, and Professor Kwok Kian Woon, Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Arts Singapore, who delivered their remarks at the Lecture.

The evening concluded with a reception, and guests had the chance to browse and purchase publications from our past Anniversary Lectures and bring home physical copies of our newly launched annual magazine "Review"—a first look at the Museum’s scope of work and continuing development as a university museum.

Thank you to all our partners and guests who came down to celebrate the special occasion with us!

Access "Review" online here: bit.ly/nusmuseumreview2025
View the Anniversary Lecture pamphlet here: bit.ly/Anniversary_Lecture_2025_Pamphlet

“Even in sepia, the sea pools itself into fresh tessellations, catches the light at new angles…What new routes will this...
26/11/2025

“Even in sepia, the sea pools itself into fresh tessellations, catches the light at new angles…What new routes will this sampan carve through the water? How many new roots can one sink in soil?”
– Excerpt from "Departure is a kind of return", poem by Wong Yang

From sea-soaked stories to poetic materialities and textured correspondences, the nine writers of Writing Lab 2025—Ahmad Syarif, Dia Hakim Khaeri, Ho Yi Lin, KQH Faith, Marliini Heikkonen, Tricia Sin, Wee Yi Li Grace, Wong Yang, and Zhixin Sheng—shared excerpts of their work at a Public Reading on 13 Nov.

Across poetry, prose, and playwriting, these readings unfolded within the museum’s galleries, tracing how writing can become a form of creative inquiry—one that imaginatively extends the narrative worlds of the subjects and objects within the museum’s orbit.

Curious to read their work? Explore the Writing Lab 2025: Compendium here: bit.ly/47VWDCi

Ever thought about teaching and learning inside a museum?From ongoing exhibitions to accessing hidden collections, we we...
24/11/2025

Ever thought about teaching and learning inside a museum?

From ongoing exhibitions to accessing hidden collections, we welcome collaborations for course visits and customised assignments of various themes and learning objectives from an array of disciplines. Here’s a glimpse of our collaborations this past semester:

1. Explore a heritage home and its rich materials with NUS Baba House

Through a visit at the Baba House, students of RE3808 were introduced to the House and its history, and learnt more about its architectural and conservation elements in a sharing by the House’s Adjunct Curator Yvonne Tan. While Baba House is undergoing conservation, we are still able to facilitate some requests!

2. Customise learning experiences with our ongoing exhibitions

In a guided tour of "Continuity, Persistence, Line: Thinking through Clay – A Selection of Works by Delia Prvacki", students from NHS2079 learnt about the curatorial processes behind exhibition-making, how it was like to work with an artist, and the careful considerations involved in engaging various audiences at the university museum.

3. Access collections that are not on display for teaching and learning

Students from AH2101 had the rare opportunity to visit the Scroll and Paper Study which houses the Museum’s growing collections of over 12,000 items. They also met our Collections Officer, Devika Murugaya, and learnt more about how paper materials are cared for and conserved.

Keen to collaborate with us? Email us at [email protected] to find out more.

Address

University Cultural Centre, 50 Kent Ridge Crescent, National University Of
Singapore
119279

Opening Hours

Tuesday 10:00 - 18:00
Wednesday 10:00 - 18:00
Thursday 10:00 - 18:00
Friday 10:00 - 18:00
Saturday 10:00 - 18:00

Telephone

+65 6516 8817

Website

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