An Old New World

Visitors are enticed to explore from the moment they set foot in the museum. The design details peak curiosity while guiding visitors down into the gallery to discover Singpore's early history.

An immersive multimedia show, compelling games, a giant model ship and over 200 artefacts – including precious maps and rare specimens – come together to bring history to life from multiple perspectives. These different points of view range from those of locals (old world) to explorers (new world) as they discovered rich natural history, sailed the high seas and traded valuable goods.

This exhibition takes visitors on a journey through vastly different and fascinating settings in the East Indies. Rather than follow a typical chronological progression, the visitor is plunged into environments like the high seas, the market and the rainforest to truly immerse themselves in this 200-year time period.

To set the tone, an immersive multimedia show invites museum visitors to experience the English explorers arrival in Singapore, already a thriving international port at the time at which they were greeted by the locals. As they emerge into the exhibition, an array of precious historical maps, indigenous artefacts and interactive globes greets them as they understand how both explorers and locals navigated the seas. As they progress, they climb aboard and explore a large replica of a ship, learning about the hardships and highlights of life at sea.

Zones take people through trading at the marketplace, discovering plants and animals in the rainforest, admiring and questioning depictions of locals and landscapes, and finally back out to the sea once more to discover the factors that led up to the founding of Singapore by Raffles in 1819. Portraits, specimens, interactive games, furniture, maps and even cannons illustrate each setting. Together with the unique design of each zone, the objects and texts enrich the visitor’s understanding of every facet of this time and place, as if they had actually been there!