Asian Civilisations Museum

Went for an event at ACM recently. Took the chance to tour the museum too.

The museum is packed with lots of artifacts~ It is broken into exhibits according to the different regions in Asia. For instance, Southeast Asia, West Asia, etc.

The first feeling I have is that of being overwhelmed by artifacts. There were tons of artifacts present. Due to time constraint, I only visited a few exhibition areas.

The exhibits on China was particularly interesting. Learnt quite a fair bit on religions and stuff. Reasons for things which I had practised all along as taught by my parents.

As a whole, I will say that this is the right place to go if you want to learn about the history of Asia. The s include the free pamphlet at the start of each exhibits to aid in understanding the exhibitions and the "computer stations" or more like video stations around which relate to you the exhibits (helpful for ppl like me who are lazy to read.. ahaah). There are also some interactive stations, eg. you can put on chinese opera costumes or some headgear to take pics~ (prefer to pic)

Drawbacks include the dim lighting which made it quite hard to read the pamphlets and take photos. However, it do make the atmosphere better.

A few drawbacks though,

Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) is the first museum in the region to present a broad yet integrated perspective of pan-Asian cultures and civilisations. The Museum's collection centres on the material cultures of the different groups originating from China, Southeast Asia, South Asia and West Asia.

I was privileged to have been able to join a guided tour by one of the curators at ACM. If you're planning a visit to the museum, I strongly recommend to join the guided tours by the volunteers.

The visit to the museum had been quite an experience for me. Before the tour, I thought museums are rather boring. But when I participated in the tour and had a better understanding of the history and stories behind the things around the museum, it was quite a discovery adventure.

If you've never been into the Asian Civilisations Museum before, why not spend a day there exploring? If you would like to really absorb all the content there, I would suggest you split your visits to a few trips. If not, you might just get too tired after exploring and absorbing just one section of the museum. As the curator suggested, don't go to the museum and wants to see everything there in one visit. One should find a focus for that day and just spend enough time to complete touring that section for that day.

Oh by the way, if you are unable to join the guided tours, there's always the self-guided tour guides around the museum to help you. There are many computer guides around where they can share the interesting things within their section.

Attached is a video compilation of few things I saw at ACM. And find out about a cute and interesting cup and listen to the curator share why the cup is interesting! :)

You can also read more about the interesting finds I saw during my tour around the museum at my blog.