From Colonial Institute to People's Museum: Rethinking History at the National Museum of Singapore

Colonialism vs. Coloniality

In November 2024, the museum’s assistant curator Miriam Yeo hosted students from LKYSPP and their course convenor, Jimmy Lim (Lecturer in Political Science), to explore the museum’s colonial history. Through a gallery tour and discussion session, the group examined how the museum presents colonial history and its contemporary legacies. The discussion highlighted the ways museums can reinterpret and recontextualise colonialism, confront and address colonial stereotypes, and critique the persistence of colonial modes of thinking and being in modern society – all key aspects of the decolonial process.

The learning journey began with brief lectures by Lim and Yeo. Lim’s lecture explored Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s argument that decolonisation is not a completed historical process, but an ongoing, unfinished project that persists into the twenty-first century^[1]. This view may seem counterintuitive to many, as it challenges the widely held belief that decolonisation was completed in the twentieth century. Ndlovu-Gatsheni refutes this notion by distinguishing between “colonialism” and “coloniality”. Colonialism, Ndlovu-Gatsheni explains, refers to a period in which a major swathe of the world was annexed and administered by states such as Britain, Portugal and France. Under colonial rule, many indigenous communities were subjected to violence, cultural erasure, and exploitation of their resources for the benefit of the metropoles. While direct colonial rule began to end after 1945, coloniality — the enduring patterns of domination arising from colonialism —continues to shape present cultural practices, labour relations and knowledge production. Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s account of coloniality posits that political, economic, and cultural institutions created by former colonial powers still shape post-colonial societies in ways that uphold the interests of former colonisers. These deeply embedded systems may obstruct the development of truly autonomous and self-determined societies.

Lim and Yeo explored how coloniality manifests itself in museums in two ways: the coloniality of knowledge and the coloniality of being. The former refers to the imposition of Eurocentric ways of knowing, which tend to marginalize indigenous forms of thought. This persists in academic and cultural institutions and influences what many societies consider legitimate knowledge. Coloniality also reveals itself in the dominance of particular groups by virtue of perceived superiority of race, language and other registers of identity. Ndlovu-Gatsheni calls this “the coloniality of being” which not only privileges certain groups but diminishes the self-worth among the dominated. As an African intellectual, Ndlovu-Gatsheni applies this concept to “how African humanity was questioned” and notes that “resisting the objectification and dehumanization of black people on a world scale” remains an ongoing struggle^[2]. This objectification was not limited to African peoples. Likewise, the subsequent struggle to reclaim and restore African agency echoes broader decolonisation movements across the Global South, which call for “the dismantling of relations of power and conceptions of knowledge” that perpetuate legacies of unjust colonial hierarchies^[3]. In this sense, to “decolonise” is to question, if not challenge, institutions and systems of thought that have sustained the coloniality of knowledge and coloniality of being.

How Museums Shape Knowledge and Being

What does this mean for museums? Whilst a museum might be seen as a neutral, if not benevolent, addition to a colony, museums have also been implicated in preserving and legitimising the historical wrongs of colonialism. The question that students from LKYSPP were encouraged to reflect upon before visiting the National Museum of Singapore was: how should museums participate in decolonisation as an ongoing, unfinished, global project? Yeo’s lecture guided the students through the history of the Raffles Library and Museum as a colonial institute and its decolonisation efforts from the 1950s till today.

The Colonial Institute

From its establishment in 1874, the Raffles Library and Museum focused on supporting colonial interests, presenting Singapore in a way that catered to a European perspective whilst ignoring the perspectives of local inhabitants. The museum’s first Annual Report, written by James Collins, the institution’s first librarian and curator, emphasised the museum’s commitment to presenting the commercial viability of the colony, rather than representing its people. Collins argued that “at home” (i.e. in Britain) “there [was] a constant enquiry as to what capabilities of production of fibres, timbers, gums, resins, drugs, &c. these countries possess^[4]. In response to the metropole’s curiosity, the museum participated in colonial exhibitions in London (1873), Melbourne (1875) and Philadelphia (1876) where items like tin, gambier, coffee, sago and pepper were displayed^[5]. These exhibitions highlighted Singapore and Malaya’s commercial capabilities, and reinforced the producer-consumer relationship of the colonial economic system. In these exhibitions, the western visitor was presented with objects representing an “other” that was exotic, profitable, and subordinate to British interests.

Beyond exhibitions in foreign cities, the way the museum displayed its collection within its walls shaped ideas about the land and people it represented. Like the colonial exhibitions, the museum’s displays conveyed a controlled narrative of what the empire “owned”.

Natural history and ethnographic displays in the Raffles Library and Museum (c.1930s, Courtesy of the National Museum of Singapore)

Photographs from the early 20th century show how the museum displayed its natural and ethnographic collections in a “dictionary-like” manner. These displays reflected the colonial perspective of the people and places under British rule. They removed specimens and cultural objects from their contexts and displayed them according to Eurocentric knowledge systems. Sometimes, the museum’s depiction of colonised people reinforced racist ideas. In a showcase titled “Pagan tribes of the Malay Peninsula”, unnamed indigenous groups were represented by weapons, anthropometric photographs, and busts^[6]. These items were reduced to objects of curiosity, with only a selected aspect of their culture on display. This selective presentation reinforced the colonial notion that certain people groups were inferior, lacking rich histories or even humanity.

The Post-Colonial ‘People’s Museum’

After Singapore gained internal self-governance, efforts were made to change this narrative. The museum became part of the newly-formed Ministry of Culture, which aspired to instil a sense of shared identity and “common inheritance” among people in Singapore.^[7] The museum’s role had shifted from showcasing “what we have” to exploring “who we are”. A case in point was the Indian Art Exhibition (1959), which aimed to distance Singapore from its colonial past and identify it as a nation with a culture and history beyond its colonial administration. Lee Kuan Yew declared that the show signalled “that the history of Malaya did not begin with Sir Stamford Raffles.^[8] Ironically, however, Lee’s decolonial push reflected a view held by Raffles: that the Hindu-Buddhist cultures of South Asian brought a positive social order to the Malay World.^[9] Hosting a travelling exhibition of Indian ancient and contemporary art was not representative of the daily lived experiences of people, but still cleaved to the idea of identity rooted in a great, foreign civilisation. While Singapore sought to move beyond its colonial past, colonial assumptions persisted.

Beyond a change in exhibitions, a deeper transformation is needed in the way Singaporeans think about their own history. Rather than encyclopaedic displays that suggest a single, overarching narrative of history, or focusing on the “big men” and great civilisations of history, today NMS aims to present the everyday lives of people in Singapore. For example, visitors can touch bricks displayed next to archival photographs of incarcerated Indian persons who made them in the Convict Jail in Bras Basah. Another exhibit features a Syair composed by Tuan Simi, a scribe and translator, who criticised the exploitative practices of the British East India Company. These exhibits humanise historical experiences and encourage visitors to consider life from the perspectives of the colonised.

Examining Two Museum Exhibits

After the lectures, the students were brought on a gallery tour emphasising Singapore’s colonial history and how people in Singapore grapple with this legacy. The students were invited to critique two displays within the present-day Singapore History Gallery: a video titled "Sejarah Singapura" by Ho Tze Nyen, and a display of portraits of three colonial governors. The discussion highlighted ways that the museum can continue to self-evaluate to ensure that its displays more sensitively address the legacies of colonialism, both in terms of content and presentation.

The video by Ho Tzu Nyen reimagined two settlements in Singapore based on the writings of the Chinese traveller Wang Da Yuan. While students appreciated the visual element it added to the section, they voiced discomfort with how the people in the video were portrayed – largely performing repetitive, mundane tasks. One student described feeling like she was “observing exotic people,” highlighting the power imbalance in the gaze adopted by the video.^[10] Rather than simply depicting life as described by historical sources, the students challenged the museum to prompt questions about how people of the past thought and felt, to restore humanity and agency to them.

The display of governors’ portraits drew even stronger responses from the students. Many shared that their size and position created a sense of power and prestige; they looked like the “main characters” of the gallery.^[11] Students also commented on an absence of context – little was mentioned about why they had such prominence, or how they functioned within the larger schema of colonial society. One student contrasted the glorified portrayal of the governors with nearby displays of an opium den and secret societies. Chinese people represented in those spaces, in her view, were presented simplistically as deviant members of society disobeying colonial rule. While the curatorial intent had been to highlight social inequality under colonialism, the students’ feedback suggested that the museum could present its perspective more explicitly, actively engaging with the past by addressing its prejudices. This aligns with contemporary museum practices worldwide, where institutions are adopting a more reflexive and critical approach. Increasingly, museum displays, captions and interpretive methods explicitly confront historical injustices and their ongoing impacts. By adopting such practices, museums can foster a more nuanced understanding of history, encourage critical thinking among visitors, and contribute to broader societal discussions about colonialism and its legacies. This approach not only enhances the educational value of exhibits but also demonstrates the museum’s commitment to transparency and ethical representation.

Conclusion

This learning journey emerged from a shared passion to raise awareness of Singapore’s colonial history, and to explore how museums can address and engage with this past. In doing so, it also sought to interrogate the deeper, lingering effects of the coloniality of knowledge and the coloniality of being. While the museum has made progress in highlighting local stories and showcasing the lives of ordinary people, the journey revealed that more work is needed to move closer to its goal of becoming a people’s museum. To achieve this, the museum must critically assess what its exhibits communicate — or fail to communicate — and consider how much agency and humanity they restore to those who have been historically silenced. The ongoing challenge is to create a museum that not only reflects history but actively contributes to healing historical wrongs.