The front block of the museum building dates back to 1887. It features an elegant neo-Palladian design, a European style of architecture characterised by a highly symmetrical façade and the use of pediments above windows.
This gallery shines the spotlight on how the people of Singapore coped with daily life and responded with grit and tenacity to the Japanese Occupation. It celebrates their resilience, resourcefulness and self-reliance – values that still underpin the core of Singapore’s society today. Snapshots of these memories are presented in an immersive setting of crumbling walls, evocative of the uncertain and shattered world our war survivors endured.
Nevertheless, amid the desperation, hope remained. As you walk through the backroom of the gallery, you will find stories and artefacts that bear testament to courage, hope and love in a period marked by fear, hardship and oppression.
Visit our permanent galleries with your little ones and play spot-the-artefact! Our colourful Early Learning Resources introduce pre-schoolers to our artefacts according to the themes of Numbers, Colours, and ABCs. Available at $8 per set from the Museum Label shop. For more children's activity booklets, click here.
Join us this August to make your celebration of Singapore’s 56th birthday a special one! The National Museum will be presenting a variety of programmes that you can look forward to at the museum, or from the comforts of your home.
Join us for a series of the Picturing The Pandemic programmes, in complementary to your visit around the exhibition.
Join us for a series of Home, Truly programmes to relieve nostalgic moments and experiences in Singapore’s past and present that express our identity and collective memory as a people.
Made possible by people from all walks of life in Singapore, this exhibition tells the story of how people are coming together to respond and live through this local and global crisis, through photographs, short film and donated artefacts on view.
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