The Asian Civilisations Museum

The Asian Civilisations Museum occupies a handsome nineteenth-century government building on the river, and rather than sorting its collection by country it organises it around trade, which suits a city that exists for exactly that reason. The single most remarkable thing in it is the Tang shipwreck cargo: an Arab dhow that sank off Indonesia in the ninth century was found in 1998 with some sixty thousand pieces of Chinese ceramics aboard, packed for export, along with gold and silver, and the recovered hoard is displayed here as the clearest evidence anywhere of how far and how early the Indian Ocean trade in Chinese goods ran. Around it are galleries of Islamic art, Chinese ceramics, devotional sculpture from across Asia and Peranakan material. It is well designed, air-conditioned and rarely crowded.

History

The museum first opened in the Old Tao Nan School on Armenian Street on 22 April 1997, moved its flagship to the restored Empress Place Building on 2 March 2003, and the Armenian Street building reopened on 25 April 2008 as the Peranakan Museum; a revamp of the main museum was unveiled in phases from 14 November 2015 (Wikipedia, Asian Civilisations Museum).

What you'll find

• The Tang shipwreck cargo - sixty thousand ninth-century Chinese ceramics from a sunken dhow.
• The trade galleries - objects organised by the routes that carried them.
• Devotional sculpture - Hindu, Buddhist and Islamic art from across Asia.
• The Empress Place building - the restored colonial-era hall on the river.

When to go

Year-round, and a good option in the heat or a downpour. Weekday mornings are quietest. Friday evenings have extended hours at some points, which is worth checking. Allow two to three hours to do the shipwreck gallery properly.

Practical notes

The organising idea, trade rather than country, means the collection can feel scattered if you came looking for a particular culture's art. The shipwreck gallery is the highlight by a distance and some visitors find the rest a step down. Labelling is thorough to the point of dense.

Nearby

The Singapore River quays, National Gallery and Marina Bay are all a short walk away.

Key facts