Red Rover off Singapore, 19th century

The National Heritage Board (NHB) presents The World of Heritage Conservation: Sneak Peeks into Safeguarding Singapore’s National Collection, a new travelling exhibition that brings visitors into the often unseen world of the conservators at the Heritage Conservation Centre (HCC) who care for these treasures. The exhibition features case studies of how items in the National Collection are conserved in four fields – paintings, textiles, objects and paper – alongside displays of a conservator’s tools of trade.

The exhibition, which took 10 months to put together, also profiles four of HCC’s conservators, each specialising in one of the four conservation fields, to demonstrate the process of interventive and preventive work on artwork and artefacts in our National Collection. The exhibition also includes interactive features such as a large puzzle and a panorama flip board, behind-the-scenes videos, and a display of 14 key tools that are used in the conservation process.

The four artefacts highlighted in the case studies include a 19th-century painting of an opium clipper at sea against the backdrop of the Singapore waterfront; an orange floral lace cheongsam from the mid-20th century; a toothbrush used by a prisoner of war during the Japanese Occupation; and a panorama of Singapore’s cityscape hand-drawn on paper from memory.

Venues:
September 2021: Central Public Library
October 2021: Bishan Public Library
November 2021: Jurong West Public Library
December 2021: Marine Parade Public Library
January 2022: TBC
February 2022: Tampines Regional Library

When: 1 Sep 2021 - 28 Feb 2022,

By: National Heritage Board (NHB)