Singapore Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

About Singapore Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story

By the ULTIMATE Singapore Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Singapore’s arts scene is a story of buildings given new purpose: two national monuments on the Padang turned into a national gallery, a 1930s barracks in the jungle turned into a gallery cluster, and a warehouse by the container port turned into a museum of contemporary art. Here is the story behind them, and how to see them well.

The Civic District

Start where colonial Singapore did, on the Padang. Facing the green across St Andrew’s Road stand two national monuments: City Hall, completed in 1929 as the Municipal Building, and the former Supreme Court, the last neoclassical building erected in Singapore, built a decade later around a domed rotunda and deliberately matched to the height of its neighbour.

In 2015 the two became National Gallery Singapore. The Paris-based studioMilou, chosen from 111 international entries and working with CPG Consultants, joined them at roof level beneath a draped canopy carried on tree-like columns. In the Padang Atrium, a filigree roof filters daylight in the way a forest canopy does, its pattern drawn from the weaving of rattan. Under the old Supreme Court dome, the former law library is now a gallery, its soaring interior and encircling balcony preserved.

In Singapore the old institutions of state, the court, the town hall and the barracks, have become the places where you meet the region’s art.

The Gallery welcomed its first visitors on 24 November 2015 and celebrated its tenth birthday in 2025, having welcomed over 14 million visitors. It holds the world’s largest public collection of modern art from Singapore and Southeast Asia, more than 8,000 works. Climb to the Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden for the view across the Padang to Marina Bay.

The rest of the district is an easy walk. At Empress Place, by the river, the Asian Civilisations Museum shares the waterfront with Victoria Theatre and Victoria Concert Hall; on Armenian Street, the Peranakan Museum occupies the former Tao Nan School; and the National Museum of Singapore is on Stamford Road.

A short taxi ride north-east, Kampong Glam adds the city’s Malay and Islamic heritage. Land was set aside in the 1820s for a royal mosque near Istana Kampong Glam; the Masjid Sultan you see today, with its golden domes and minarets in the Saracenic style, was designed by the Irish architect Denis Santry of Swan & Maclaren when the original brick building was replaced, and it was gazetted a national monument in 1975. Visit outside prayer times, dress modestly, then wander Arab Street and the narrow shops of Haji Lane, where independent boutiques and murals fill the old shophouses.

Gillman Barracks

For contemporary galleries, head south-west to Gillman Barracks. The cluster occupies a former military barracks dating from 1936, surrounded by tropical greenery, and was launched in 2012 by the Economic Development Board, the National Arts Council and JTC Corporation, with the aim of making it Asia’s destination for international and Southeast Asian art. The galleries listed on its site include ShanghART, Sundaram Tagore, Ota Fine Arts, Mizuma, Yavuz and Richard Koh Fine Art, and the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore has presented artists here since October 2013.

Plan for a slow afternoon: the low colonial blocks are spread across a green hillside, there are cafés and restaurants among them, and opening hours vary from gallery to gallery, so check each one before you go.

By the port: SAM and the river

The Singapore Art Museum has moved to the waterfront. Since January 2022 its home has been Tanjong Pagar Distripark on Keppel Road, an industrial warehouse beside the port whose vast floors suit large-scale contemporary works. The museum has confirmed that it will not return to its former home in the old St Joseph’s Institution building on Bras Basah Road, a national monument.

By the Singapore River, STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery opens contemporary art up to visitors through its workshop and gallery.

Marina Bay and the garden city

Around the bay, Singapore’s modern architecture takes over. Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, open since 2002, is the city’s performing arts centre under its two domes. Across the water, the lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands shows exhibitions where art meets science, and Gardens by the Bay holds the Flower Dome, the Cloud Forest and the Supertree Grove.

Greenery runs through the city’s newest buildings too. At Jewel Changi Airport, Moshe Safdie designed a dome of glass and steel around the Rain Vortex, at 40 metres the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, which falls through an opening in the roof past seven floors, and around it the terraces of the Shiseido Forest Valley, one of the largest indoor gardens in Singapore. Allow time for it on your way in or out.

The cultural calendar

January is Singapore’s art season. Singapore Art Week, organised by the National Arts Council, holds its 15th edition from 21 to 31 January 2027, with events across the island. At its heart, ART SG returns to the Sands Expo & Convention Centre at Marina Bay Sands for its fifth edition from 22 to 24 January 2027, with a VIP preview on 21 January, alongside S.E.A. Focus. Book hotels early for that week.

What’s new

National Gallery Singapore (checked October 2026): the UOB Southeast Asia Gallery is closed and will reopen in late 2027; works from the National Collection are shown across the Gallery meanwhile.

Singapore Art Museum (checked October 2026): Tanjong Pagar Distripark remains the museum’s home; it will not return to the Bras Basah Road building.

Our advice

Give the Civic District a full morning, starting at the National Gallery when it opens and ending with lunch by the river at Empress Place. Save Gillman Barracks for a weekday afternoon, and come to Marina Bay at dusk, when the domes of the Esplanade and the Supertrees light up across the water.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Singapore Art, Architecture & Culture: the back story before you go.