National Gallery Singapore Opens in the Former City Hall and Supreme Court

National Gallery Singapore opened on 24 November 2015. The museum occupies two of the city’s most important historic buildings, the former City Hall and the former Supreme Court, which face the Padang, the green at the centre of the colonial district. With 64,000 square metres of floor area it is comparable in size to the Musée d’Orsay or Tate Modern, and it holds the largest public collection of modern art from Southeast Asia.

Two buildings, one museum

City Hall was completed in 1929 and the Supreme Court, with its green copper dome, in 1939. Both carry heavy associations. The Japanese surrender in Southeast Asia was accepted in City Hall in 1945, and Lee Kuan Yew took his oath as the first prime minister there in 1959.

The conversion, by the French practice Studio Milou with the Singapore firm CPG Consultants, cost about 530 million Singapore dollars. Jean-François Milou chose to leave the two buildings largely as they were and to join them with a single gesture: a canopy of glass and fine metal mesh that rises over the gap between them and drapes down to form the entrance. The canopy is carried on steel columns that branch like trees. Two bridges cross the atrium at upper levels, and a new basement concourse links the buildings underground.

Much of the work is invisible. The soil was poor and City Hall had settled unevenly; foundations were strengthened, floors reinforced to carry sculpture, and climate control inserted behind historic surfaces. Courtrooms, panelled chambers, the holding cells and the marble corridors have been kept and are part of the visit.

The collection

Two long-term displays give the museum its purpose. The DBS Singapore Gallery, in City Hall, tells the story of art in Singapore from the 19th century, with painters such as Georgette Chen, Liu Kang and Cheong Soo Pieng. The UOB Southeast Asia Gallery, in the Supreme Court, does the same for the region as a whole, from Raden Saleh and Juan Luna to Hendra Gunawan and the modernists of Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. No other museum had attempted this history at such scale, and for many visitors it is a first encounter with the art of the region.

Restaurants and roof

The building also houses several restaurants, including Odette, which opened here in 2015 and became the most decorated restaurant in the city, and the Peranakan restaurant National Kitchen by Violet Oon. The roof terrace gives a view across the Padang to Marina Bay.

The gallery is a few minutes on foot from Raffles Singapore and City Hall station.