Singapore HeritageFest 2009 :: Overview :: NUS Museum

Kampung Bugis – Kampung Glam (a walking tour led by Imran bin Tajudeen)

18 July 2009, 9am – 11am
Meeting place will be confirmed upon booking of tour

This walking tour offers a fresh perspective in reading of tangible and intangible layers of the city, such as the real Bugis former settlement, the alleged true Raffles’ landing place, Farquhar’s town, and the hidden Mandala of the Royal town of Kampung Gelam. This tour is limited to 20 people only.

Imran bin Tajudeen studied the historic urban vernacular heritage of the port cities of insular Southeast Asia or Nusantara for his recently-submitted doctoral thesis. He is interested in the processes, underlying motivations and assumptions through which notions of ‘traditional built heritage’ have been constituted, and how they are narrated in contemporary reconstructions. Imran was awarded the Jeffrey Cook Prize for Best Student Paper for the Tenth IASTE Conference in 2006 for a critique of how state projects for architectural and cultural heritage intervention in Kampung Glam and Geylang Serai have reinvented ethnic identities in stereotypical ways, in contrast to the historical evidence and with contemporary reactions and strategies of counter-appropriation.

Registration is closed.

Discovering the Neil Road Surrounds (a walking tour led by The History Workroom & Foo Su Ling)

25 July 2009, 9am – 11am
Meeting place will be confirmed upon booking of tour

This programme includes a walking tour of the area around Neil Road and a visit to the Baba House. Discover the rich heritage of this neighbourhood and the changes it has seen in architecture, landscape and everyday activities. At the Baba House, experience how a Chinese Peranakan family lived in the 1920s and find out about the meanings of the carvings and artworks surrounding their home. This tour is limited to 13 people only.

The History Workroom is a research and writing consultancy with expertise in researching the histories of corporations, institutions, schools, communities and even individuals. Foo Su Ling is a manager responsible for programming and curation at NUS Museum.

Registration is closed.

Constructed Landscapes

Ongoing (Free admission), 10am – 7.30pm (Tue – Sat), 10am – 6pm (Sun)
NUS Museum, National University of Singapore, University Cultural Centre, 50 Kent Ridge Crescent

Presented in three sections - Engagement/Memory/Imagination - the exhibition explores artistic interactions with the land, personal and collective memory, as well as relationships with physical space, cultural imagination and practice. Through paintings, drawings, photographs, textiles and video documentations, the landscape observations convey, construct and represent aspects of such landscapes, as well as offer presentations and interpretations.

Of Fingerbowls & Hankies – Chris Yap voyeurs through the Baba House

25 June – 31 December 2009
The Gallery, 3rd level, Baba House, 157 Neil Road

Artist and photographer Chris Yap explores what it means to be 'Peranakan' in our contemporary world. Using portraiture and still-life photography, aspects of The Peranakan as is commonly represented are juxtaposed against daily life and experiences. The histories of traditional Peranakan objects are considered, drawing attention to interesting and varied opportunities. What continues to be traditionally and exclusively Peranakan and what possibilities unfold moving forward?

Visits to the exhibition at the 3rd level only are free and by appointment. Visit www.nus.edu.sg/museum/ for more details.

Activity Detail

Organised by:

NUS Museum