Peranakan Museum, Singapore
Copyright © Timothy Tye.
Peranakan Museum
The Peranakan Museum is a soon-to-open museum in Singapore. The building in which it will be housed is now undergoing restoration. That building, the former Tao Nan School, used to house the Asian Civilisations Museum, before it moved to its present located at the Empress Place Building.
The Old Tao Nan School was set up by Hokkien clansmen of the Singapore Hokkien Association, to preserve Chinese culture and heritage. There were 110 founding members to the school, and one of its first presidents as well as founding member was the wealthy leader, Tan Kah Kee, who donated huge sums to the school as well as to other Chinese schools. The Tao Nan School also received patronage from sugar baron Oei Tiong Ham, who donated $10,000 for the purchase of the land on which the school was built.
The medium of instruction was originally Hokkien, but it switched to Mandarin in 1912, an unprecedented move coming at the wake of the fall of Chinese imperial rule in mainland China and the establishment of a republic.
The Old Tao Nan School building was built between 1910-1912 in the Neo-classical style. The central entrance leads to an atrium with a skylight. Symmetrical staircases lead up to the galleries and corridors on the second and third floors. The verandahs were made especially wide.
The Old Tao Nan School building housed the Asian Civilisations Museum until 1 January 2006, when it was closed for renovations, with the reopening slated for 2008, when it hence be known as the Peranakan Museum.
