ST exhibition: More than 120,000 visitors and counting

Curator-led tours available on closing weekend on Oct 3 and 4

Visitors at The Straits Times' exhibition at the ArtScience Museum. According to an ongoing visitors' survey, those who have seen the exhibition gave it an average rating of 4.07 out of five points.
Visitors at The Straits Times' exhibition at the ArtScience Museum. According to an ongoing visitors' survey, those who have seen the exhibition gave it an average rating of 4.07 out of five points. PHOTO: DIOS VINCOY JR FOR THE STRAITS TIMES

More than 120,000 people have visited The Straits Times' free multimedia exhibition at the ArtScience Museum since its opening on July 17.

Titled Singapore STories: Then. Now. Tomorrow, it tells the story of the nation through photographs, headlines and reports mined from the archives of the 170-year-old newspaper.

The exhibition, co-curated by the museum and the newspaper, will end on Oct 4. Last admission will be at 6pm on that day.

According to an ongoing visitors' survey - which has had more than 470 responses so far - those who have seen the exhibition gave it an average rating of 4.07 out of five points.

The survey also showed that the elements that left the deepest impressions involved the late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, the nation's separation from Malaysia, and photographs of Singapore's past and present.

  • CURATOR-LED TOURS

  • Where: Level 3, entrance of Singapore STories at ArtScience Museum, Marina Bay Sands.

  • When: Oct 3 and 4, 11.30am and 5pm each day.

  • Admission: Free. Up to 25 visitors on a first-come, first-served basis.

"This was an incredible exhibition," wrote a visitor in the anonymous survey conducted by the museum.

"Very few nations have such a sense of their collective future."

The exhibition saw a surge in attendance during the nation's Golden Jubilee weekend, which coincided with National Day celebrations.

One of the crowd-pullers is an original, first edition of ST, published on July 15, 1945. It is on loan from the National Library Board.

The exhibition does not focus on only the past, but also the future. In collaboration with property giant CapitaLand, it invites Singaporeans to envision the next 50 years.

CapitaLand is the presenting sponsor for the exhibition, while Standard Chartered Bank is a gold sponsor. Best Denki sponsored the exhibition's equipment.

"We are greatly encouraged by the strong attendance and interest shown by visitors of all walks of life," said Ms Honor Harger, executive director of the museum.

"The appeal of the exhibition lies mainly in the way it uses innovative exhibition design, cutting-edge new technology and historical material to look at the past, present and future of Singapore," she added.

Visitors to the exhibition during its closing weekend will get the chance to join curator-led tours, at 11.30am and 5pm each day on Oct 3 and 4.

Leading the tours are two co-curators - ST's arts correspondent Huang Lijie and the museum's project manager Julia Vasko.

"I hope visitors will leave the show aware of how the newspaper has been telling the stories of the people of Singapore for 170 years, and doing so in a growing range of media that now includes digital platforms," said Ms Huang.

Said Straits Times editor Warren Fernandez: "We're very heartened by the strong turnout for the exhibition, which exceeded our expectations. The Straits Times has had Singapore covered since 1845, and we hope that many more will be able to experience the milestones of Singapore's history as captured through the pages, pictures and videos of ST.

"The curators' tours will add another dimension to this not-to- be-missed experience."

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 22, 2015, with the headline ST exhibition: More than 120,000 visitors and counting. Subscribe