A sawmill whose roots go back to 1912 and cave temples most travellers to China will never be allowed inside: Singapore’s art calendar from now to January is unusually good at holding on to things. This guide is for culture lovers planning a weekend, students looking for a free afternoon, families who want something bigger than a mall outing, and anyone who’d like to see art in the city before it moves on. The table below has the dates.
| What | When | Where | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Painter Inside a Teochew Mansion | 13 Nov 2026 to 31 Jan 2027, 10am to 10pm daily | House of Tan Yeok Nee, 101 Penang Road | Free |
| SAM’s Collection Won’t Sit Still | 2 Oct 2026 to 18 Jul 2027 | Singapore Art Museum, Tanjong Pagar Distripark | — |
| A Kelong and a Working Sawmill | 23 to 25 Oct (kelong); 7 Nov, 9am to 11am, 1pm to 3pm or 4pm to 6pm (sawmill) | Golden Mile Tower; Sin Siong Lim Sawmill | — |
| Walk Into Caves Dunhuang Keeps Closed | 25 Sep 2026 to 7 Mar 2027 | Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place | — |
| Fan Chang Tien Gets the Full Story | From 16 Oct, daily 10am to 7pm | National Gallery Singapore | — |
What Ties This Season Together
Across five shows, the same question keeps coming up: what’s worth keeping when places, collections and traditions change? At the House of Tan Yeok Nee, painter Yong Wee Loon extends a legacy that began with his grandfather, a founding member of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA).
Elsewhere, OH! Open House sends artists into a kelong and the country’s last operating sawmill, while Singapore Art Museum (SAM) lets its collection display shift over the coming months. National Gallery Singapore revisits an ink master and adds a listening space to its galleries, and the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) rebuilds caves that most people can never enter. Some of these shows are free, and none of them requires an art degree to enjoy.
Opening Next: Autumn’s Big Openings
Three dates matter here. National Gallery Singapore’s Fan Chang Tien show opens on 16 October, OH! Open House’s Departures starts on 23 October, and the season’s biggest heritage-venue show, TERRAINS, arrives on 13 November in a building that’s worth the trip even before you look at a single painting.
A Painter Inside a Teochew Mansion
TERRAINS is Yong Wee Loon‘s second solo exhibition, and it runs from 13 November 2026 to 31 January 2027 at the House of Tan Yeok Nee, 101 Penang Road. According to the organiser, entry is free and the gallery opens 10am to 10pm daily. Yong is a big name for a reason: in 2024, his diptych A Sip Through Time won both the UOB Painting of the Year (Singapore) in the Established Artist Category and the region-wide UOB Southeast Asian Painting of the Year, the two top prizes of the bank’s long-running art competition.
The venue does half the selling. Built in 1885 and a National Monument since 1974, the house is described as the last of four grand Teochew mansions built in Singapore. It’s been a private home, a station master’s quarters, a girls’ school and the Salvation Army’s Singapore headquarters, and it reopened in 2025 as a heritage and cultural venue, and TERRAINS is presented there with the support of NAFA and the Karim Family Foundation, in its Heritage Gallery.
Around 40 paintings, studies and works on paper are grouped by theme rather than date, across three zones. Terra Firma covers the streets and everyday scenes of Singapore and Southeast Asia that built Yong’s reputation. Terra Incognita gathers work from his two-month residency at NAFA’s studios at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris (March to April 2026), and Terra Nova shows where that experimenting landed, in bolder colour, solid forms and Matisse-inspired paper cut-outs.
“Paris gave me the time and space to experiment and to look at things differently. But I have not left behind what has always interested me: the people, places and everyday moments around us,” Yong says. That continuity runs in the family. His grandfather, Yong Mun Sen, was a pioneer watercolour artist in Malaya and a founding member of NAFA in 1938, and TERRAINS is a fundraising exhibition, with Yong hoping buyers and collectors will support NAFA and the next generation of artists.
Treat this as a weeknight plan, since a 10pm closing gives you time for dinner nearby first. Walk the three zones in order, because the jump from Terra Firma’s detailed street scenes to Terra Nova’s cut-outs is the most satisfying thing in the room.
📅 13 Nov 2026 to 31 Jan 2027, 10am to 10pm daily · 📍 House of Tan Yeok Nee, 101 Penang Road · 💰 Free
Worth Planning Around: Runs Into 2027
Two shows give you months rather than days: SAM’s collection display runs until 18 July 2027 and ACM’s cave exhibition until 7 March 2027. With those, the question is when to go rather than whether you’ll make it, and SAM in particular rewards a return trip.
SAM’s Collection Won’t Sit Still
SAMCollection: The Present is Unstable opened on 2 October at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark and runs until 18 July 2027. It’s the third show drawn from the museum’s collection. Singapore Art Museum’s collection show is built to be seen more than once, as we explained when it was first announced, and SAM says works will rotate in over the coming months, with the first changes due from the end of 2026.
The current line-up asks you to do things. Gary-Ross Pastrana’s Water Cuts (stone) (2017) invites visitors to ladle salt water onto a marble slab, attempting to cut stone through sheer repetition, and the futility is delivered with a wink. Jason Wee’s Labyrinths (2017) is a path of truncated barriers and irregular tactile paving that you step into, so your attention shifts from how you look to how you move.
Sin Wai Kin’s The Time of Our Lives (2024) uses drag to question how fixed identity is, while Hao Jingban’s I Witness (2025) traces grief through everyday routines and casts the viewer as a witness to loss. Expect a show that’s more emotional than its title suggests.
From the end of 2026, the room will gradually change as works arrive by Lim Tzay Chuen, Erika Tan, Naeem Mohaiemen, Loeum Lorn and Pio Abad. “How can works from the past help us understand the present?” asks SAM chief curator Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, and the rotation is the museum’s answer. SAM posts the changes on its social media, along with chances to watch artworks being moved in transit.
Go now while the hands-on pieces are in place, then plan a second visit once the new works land. If you only have one trip in you, wait for the changeover, since you’ll catch traces of the old configuration alongside the new arrivals.
📅 2 Oct 2026 to 18 Jul 2027 · 📍 Singapore Art Museum, Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Art You Can Listen To, Watch Being Made or Take Part In
The last three shows give you something to do beyond looking: a dining session about fishing, a working sawmill you can tour, a stamp trail with collectable figurines, and two museum soundscapes. These are the ones to bring a friend who claims museums bore them.
A Kelong and a Working Sawmill
OH! Open House, an independent arts organisation, has launched Departures, a programme that brings artists into places facing closure, redevelopment or transition. Its question is a good one: what should continue even when a place can’t? The first two editions look at a kelong (a traditional fishing platform built out at sea) and Sin Siong Lim Sawmill, which OH! describes as Singapore’s last operating sawmill.
The kelong edition runs 23 to 25 October at Golden Mile Tower, so you won’t need a boat. Tickets are on the OH! ticketing site. Kelong E63 was run by the late Timothy Ng, known as Uncle Timothy, and his wife Maureen Ng, with an adjoining floating fish farm until it stopped operating in 2025. Artist-curator Daniel Chong works with fishing nets and wooden floorboards Uncle Timothy gave him, while Kenny Lek of Pasarfish hosts a dining and storytelling experience about Singapore’s shift from wild catch to fish farming.
The sawmill edition is on Saturday, 7 November, with sessions at 9am to 11am, 1pm to 3pm and 4pm to 6pm. The business traces its roots to Siong Lim Sawmill, founded in 1912, and has moved from processing imported logs to working with locally sourced wood, including trees removed as the city manages its greenery. Artists Robert Zhao Renhui and Lewis Choo respond to the site, and visitors see the timber, machinery and daily work alongside stories from the Lim family.
“Departures is not about asking Singapore to stop changing,” says Alan Oei, OH! Open House’s executive director. “It is about asking what deserves to continue even when the building, business or landscape does not.” Tickets for both editions are on the OH! ticketing site, and a third edition at a vinyl shop in Golden Mile follows in 2027.
The sawmill is the one to book, because it’s a single day with three slots and a working industrial yard most people never get past the gate of. Grab the 9am session if you’d rather see the machinery before the afternoon heat sets in.
📅 23 to 25 Oct (kelong); 7 Nov, 9am to 11am, 1pm to 3pm or 4pm to 6pm (sawmill) · 📍 Golden Mile Tower; Sin Siong Lim Sawmill · 🎟 Tickets for both editions: OH! ticketing site
Walk Into Caves Dunhuang Keeps Closed
Sacred Caves: Dunhuang, Buddhism, and the Silk Road runs from 25 September 2026 to 7 March 2027 at the Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place, in collaboration with the Dunhuang Academy. Its headline act is four life-size reproductions of the Mogao Caves, the cave temples made in northwestern China between the 4th and 14th centuries. Three of the four are restricted or completely closed to the public at the original site, and ACM says this is the first time reproductions at this scale have been shown in Southeast Asia.
Cave 158 sits in the Level 2 Foyer and holds the largest reclining Buddha at Mogao, shown entering nirvana surrounded by grieving mourners. The other three are in the Special Exhibitions Gallery: Cave 249 blends Buddhist and Chinese mythology into a vision of the cosmos, Cave 45 centres on one of Mogao’s finest Tang dynasty sculptural groups, and Cave 3 is known for the fluid brushwork of its paintings.
Leave time for the objects between the caves. Several of the objects and photographs on display show the caves as they once were and the world they sat in.
Then the hands-on part. A soundscape by Sulwyn Lok runs through three original compositions using instruments such as the bansuri, yangqin, dizi, ruan, cello, saron and bonang. A stamping trail stretches across ACM, the Bank of China and Fullerton Hotel, and anyone who collects at least six stamps can redeem a blind-box apsara figurine (the heavenly figures of Buddhist art), with three designs holding objects from ACM’s collection and a secret fourth drawing on a familiar Singapore custom.
This is the strongest family pick in the guide, since the stamp trail turns a museum visit into a walk along the river with a prize at the end. Families who missed ACM Adventures in late September can note that the programme now returns once every two months.
📅 25 Sep 2026 to 7 Mar 2027 · 📍 Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place · 🎟 Details on ACM’s Sacred Caves exhibition page
Fan Chang Tien Gets the Full Story
Fan Chang Tien: Rhythm of the Southern Brush opens to the public on Friday, 16 October, at National Gallery Singapore. The Gallery calls it the first major exhibition to give a holistic account of one of Singapore’s most influential ink masters, a scholar-artist whose practice spanned painting, calligraphy, poetry and seal carving. More than 70 works and archival materials fill five thematic sections.
Most accounts of Fan focus on his Singapore years, but this one follows him through Guangdong, Shanghai and Bangkok first, showing how moving between cultures shaped his work. It’s equally about his teaching, with works by artists he mentored, including Nai Swee Leng and Tan Oe Pang, tracing his influence on ink art here.
Make a full afternoon of it with the Gallery’s Soundscapes of Art listening space on Level 2 of the City Hall Wing, outside DBS Singapore Galleries 1 and 2. It’s open daily from 10am to 7pm and included with general admission. If the crowds get to you, the Calm Room on Level B1 of the City Hall Wing is free and needs no booking, with priority for visitors who urgently need a quiet, sensory-friendly space.
The Gallery opens daily from 10am to 7pm, with ticket sales ending 30 minutes before closing. If ink painting usually leaves you cold, come for the mentor story: seeing Fan’s students hung alongside him makes the tradition feel like something handed down rather than locked in a glass case.
📅 From 16 Oct, daily 10am to 7pm · 📍 National Gallery Singapore · 🎟 Tickets online or at the Gallery’s self-service kiosks
Free or Paid: Costs and Transport
The free options are straightforward: TERRAINS at 101 Penang Road from 13 November. At National Gallery Singapore, housed in the former City Hall and Supreme Court buildings, the Soundscapes of Art space comes with general admission and the Calm Room costs nothing.
Departures sawmill tickets are on OH! Open House’s Departures page and remember that the kelong edition happens at Golden Mile Tower while the sawmill edition is on site at Sin Siong Lim. SAM sits at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, and ACM is at 1 Empress Place by the Singapore River, with its stamp trail extending to the Bank of China and Fullerton Hotel nearby.
If You Only Do One
A few pairings hold up well. For a free day out, head to Penang Road for TERRAINS after 13 November. For a long indoor museum afternoon with music, put ACM’s caves and Sulwyn Lok’s soundscape together with Fan Chang Tien and the Soundscapes of Art space. For a repeat visit, SAM is the one built for it.
If there’s room for only one, book the Sin Siong Lim Sawmill session on 7 November. It runs on a single day, it puts you inside a working site that has outlasted every other sawmill on the island, and it answers the season’s big question about what to keep more directly than any gallery wall can. Tickets are on OH! Open House’s Departures page, so lock in your slot and give the caves, the mansion and the shifting SAM rooms the rest of your weekends until January!
Photos and Visuals courtesy of Darren Soh, Tim Nolan, Singapore Art Museum, OH! Open House, Dunhuang Academy, and National Gallery Singapore.
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