I want the National Museum to be the first pit stop for families: Museum director Chung May Khuen
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National Museum of Singapore director Chung May Khuen at Reunion, a space in the museum for seniors with dementia and cognitive disabilities.
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
SINGAPORE – Visitors entering the showcase of the National Museum of Singapore’s latest exhibition Play:Date
The toys may be familiar to millennials who spent their childhoods playing with them, but younger visitors, from Generation Z to Gen Alpha, are likely to find them strange and foreign.
The idea is that the sight of these toys would spark conversations between parents and their children, or even grandparents and their grandchildren, said museum director Chung May Khuen.
“If you look at some of the toys that kids these days play with, they may not be able to understand how a Game Boy is played with, and how some other toys are played, but it serves as a fantastic starting point for conversations,” she said.
Ms Chung wants the museum to be the “first pit stop” for families looking to take their grandparents somewhere, and exhibits like these from recent history are relatable and provide opportunities for different generations to interact and talk about their own experiences.
Ms Chung, who became the museum’s director in September 2019,
Ahead of her fifth anniversary at the helm of the museum, she spoke to The Straits Times about these efforts and the ongoing revamp of the museum’s permanent galleries.
Another exhibition that featured contemporary items and showed how these things can bring generations together was the Off/On exhibition on technology
The museum had put on exhibit items such as an MP3 player from Creative Technology, and a coinafon – the once ubiquitous orange-coloured public payphone.
“That was a classic example of a very successful case of how the different generations coming down to the National Museum, going to the gallery and having a fantastic time talking about the different experiences that they had using different gadgets, such as a pager versus handphones today,” said Ms Chung.
She sees this as one key way the museum can broaden its appeal.
Under her charge, the National Museum has also stepped up efforts to collect or document contemporary items and stories.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the museum and the National Library Board launched the Collecting Contemporary Singapore initiative, which included a public call for objects and stories relating to the pandemic.
The entrance to the Play:Date – Unlocking Cabinets Of Play showcase at National Museum of Singapore, which has McDonald’s toys and row of Barbie dolls.
PHOTO: ST FILE
During the pandemic, which struck months after she took charge of the museum, Ms Chung had the museum commission five photographers and two film-makers to capture how Singaporeans were managing under lockdown.
“We were actually at a very important part of Singapore’s history, and I realised that if I did not capture these things, there might be a gap,” she said, adding that a search for objects from the 2003 Sars outbreak in the national collection, which yielded few results, reminded her of the urgency to document the pandemic.
Among the items collected then was the vial of the first Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccination administered in Singapore, to National Centre for Infectious Diseases senior staff nurse Sarah Lim
The vial was displayed at the exhibition Picturing The Pandemic,
Items on display at the Picturing The Pandemic: A Visual Record Of Covid-19 In Singapore exhibition. They included a vial in a ziplock biohazard bag which contained the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine administered in Singapore, in December 2020.
PHOTO: ST FILE
The positive response to the exhibition, said Ms Chung, “made us realise that... we could be creative and use the contemporary to link visitors back to past events as well”.
This effort to document and collect contemporary items continues today. Singapore Olympic medallist Maximilian Maeder’s bib, which he wore at the m en’s kite final at the Paris Olympics in August,
“We have a lot of content, we have a lot of collections, but the entry point that will most likely be most accessible and that will resonate with visitors across a very broad spectrum is the present,” she said.
Max Maeder (left) handing over a bib worn at the Paris Olympics 2024 Men’s Kite Final to National Museum director Chung May Khuen.
PHOTO: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SINGAPORE
But some critics say the museum’s efforts to tap nostalgia leads it to overlook more thoughtful or educational ways to reach out to visitors.
Asked about this, Ms Chung said that the museum “is quite mindful that we do not only stick to one way of telling the story”.
She cited 2022’s World War II exhibition, Dislocations,
“The truth of the matter is that we can’t please everyone, as our audiences are quite wide,” she said.
“If we only do one kind of show, then you are not being accessible to other audience groups. And if you only stick to very educational components, then you’re only reaching ‘the converted’,” she added, referring to history buffs who frequent the museum.
Reaching just this crowd “wouldn’t gel with our aspiration and hope for the National Museum to be a meaningful social space to engage audiences”.
Phones on display at the exhibition Off/On: Everyday Technology That Changed Our Lives.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Keeping the National Museum relatable is something Ms Chung is paying special attention to, amid an ongoing revamp of the museum’s permanent galleries.
The revamp started in September 2023 following the closure of five galleries on level two – four Life In Singapore galleries showing what life was like in the state from around the 1920s to 1980s, and the Goh Seng Choo Gallery featuring a rotational selection of natural history drawings.
They are slated to reopen in 2026, alongside the Singapore History Gallery, which will start and end its revamp that year.
The glass rotunda, which has housed digital installation Story Of The Forest since 2016, will close in October and reopen in 2025.
Designing the revamp has been complex, Ms Chung said, as the museum has had to map out different experiences for different groups, citing the possibility of captions for children on exhibits.
She said the museum will also have to be measured in its use of technology in the revamped galleries, as there may be audiences who do not want a tech-heavy experience.
A section of the Singapore History Gallery, which will undergo a revamp in 2026.
PHOTO: ST FILE
She added that the museum also needs to be mindful of the ways in which people think of the “Singapore story”, which should include different viewpoints.
“The Singapore identity is one area the National Museum will always look after in all the different things that we do,” she said, adding that the museum is looking into how it can seed conversations about identity and its evolution, as it plans for the revamped history gallery.
The last time the history gallery was revamped was in 2015, Singapore’s golden jubilee.
The conclusion to the gallery featured an infographic on Singapore’s achievements after 50 years of independence.
Ms Chung said she wants the revised galleries to end on a more open-ended note.
“History is unfolding every day, you can’t just stop at a certain milestone and (say) that’s it,” she said.
“How do we create excitement and anticipation for our future where you and I can play a part? That is something we hope to bring across in the revamp.”
