Can Singapore become a nation of museum lovers? There are about 20 million visitors each year to Singaporean attractions, but only 10 per cent of these visit museums. Worse, although some new museums have opened in recent years, such as the impressive Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) and the Chinatown Heritage Centre, overall attendance has been stagnant. Even cheap entry fees, in the S$3-S$5 ($13-$22) per-person range, haven't helped.
It's not that the museums are uninteresting. Some, like the ACM, have unusual collections that are engagingly presented, but anyone going there is more likely to encounter a European tourist than a local resident. So the powers that be have decided it's time to establish a culture of visiting and appreciating museums. The National Heritage Board has announced an ambitious strategy over the next three years to draw new audiences to the city-state's museums, make more funds available to them and heighten professional standards. The goal is to double the number of visitors to museums to more than 4.2 million within the next five years. The budget is modest - less than S$1 million for the first year.
The main target of the upcoming advertising blitz will be those under 35, as most of the 900,000 visitors to the bureau's six museums (the city's largest) every year are above that age. Activities such as a museum-hopping bus ride, and night museum tours, will be planned during International Museum Day which, despite its name, is a week-long celebration in May. An experimental 24-hour museum opening attracted 10,000 people recently, and the bureau plans to repeat this all-night event.
Meanwhile, to reach new 'e-savvy' audiences, the bureau will soon launch its own internet blog. Its aim: to demystify what happens behind museum walls and keep the online communities plugged into the museum scene.
Singaporeans can also look forward to the reopening of the National Museum of Singapore, housed in a beautiful colonial building renovated at a cost of S$118 million. Due to open in December next year, it will retell history not in the usual chronological order, but in lifestyle categories such as film, photography, fashion and food. Later, the former supreme court and city hall buildings will be reincarnated as an integrated, 'world-class' gallery, displaying collections from the Singapore Art Museum which cannot be shown there for lack of room.
But whether Singaporeans will flock to their museums remains to be seen. My advice: make museum entry free. As anyone who goes to museums here knows, whenever there is a free entry day, the crowds always show up.
