National Gallery Singapore opened Let’s Imagine the World Together: Art in Southeast Asia on Thursday, 5 November 2026. It runs in the Level 4 Gallery of the City Hall Wing until 26 September 2027. You’ll need a General Admission pass, which is free for Singaporeans and permanent residents (PRs), so for most locals, trying a very different kind of museum visit costs nothing.
If you’ve ever drifted past a painting, nodded as if you understood it and kept walking, this show was made for you. Instead of asking for art-history homework, the exhibition runs on touch, sound, role-play and your own memories.
Your Art Degree Can Stay Home
The Gallery’s Learning and Outreach team and its Community and Access team designed the show, with support from the curators. That explains why it reads like an invitation rather than a lecture. The exhibition offers imaginative prompts and questions to help you look closely and bring in your own experiences.
Dr Eugene Tan, the Gallery’s Chief Executive Officer and Director, framed the project around the Gallery’s identity as a “People’s Museum”. “We hope visitors will feel encouraged to form their own interpretations and discover how art connects with their lives and the world around them,” he said. He added that the works “can also open conversations about the people, stories, and places that matter in our lives today.”
That last line is the strongest selling point here. The paintings carry histories from across the region, but the show keeps steering you back to questions about who you are and where you belong. Those are questions most of us already turn over late at night in our HDB bedrooms.
Grab the Imagination Bag First
Start at the entrance and pick up the Imagination Bag. It’s a toolkit of prompts, props and hands-on activities tied to the show’s three themes.
Working through a prompt is a much easier way in than squinting at the date on a label.
People, Stories, Places
The show is split into three sections, and each one asks you to hold the art up against your own life. People centres on portraits. Raden Saleh’s Portrait of Betsy Teengs and Fua Haribhitak’s Face ask what you can, and can’t, figure out about someone from an image. Scroll through a feed full of filtered selfies and that question feels uncomfortably close to home.
Stories looks at how artists respond to history, social change and daily routines, through works including Juan Luna’s España y Filipinas (Spain and the Philippines), Saya Chone’s Royal Family and Lim Hak Tai’s Fire. Places turns to natural and built environments. There, Nhek Dim’s Village Scene and Tan Lip Seng’s Z invite you to think about how a place can hold memory and change.
If you only have time to linger in one section, make it People. Face has its own Slow Art Guide audio station later in the exhibition, so you can meet that painting twice in very different ways.
The Forest Fire You Can Touch
This is where the do not touch rule takes a break, though only at one station, so keep your hands off the actual canvases. Raden Saleh’s Boschbrand (Forest Fire) appears as a projected image. Beside it is the Tactile-Audio Interaction System (TAIS), a station where you run your fingers over raised reproductions of details from the painting while audio descriptions play.
The Gallery co-developed TAIS with Beyond Vision International, with the visually impaired community in mind. It is adapted from the Gallery’s own Hands-On Learning and Development (HOLD) Collection. According to the Gallery, this is the first time a HOLD resource has been built directly into an exhibition display.
Slow Down, Headphones On
There are three Slow Art Guide listening stations in the exhibition. Each one has a headset and a self-guided audio journey through a single work: Fua Haribhitak’s Face, Galo B. Ocampo’s Moro Dance or Sulaiman Esa’s The Mystical Reality Reinvented: Hua. The approach draws on slow looking and mindfulness, so you spend a long stretch with one piece and notice details you’d normally scroll straight past.
Leave Your Mark on the Wall
At the Co-creation wall, you notice natural forms and everyday scenes, then arrange and layer shapes and colours onto a shared mural. Every contribution changes the scene, so the wall your friend saw on Tuesday won’t match the one you see on Saturday. That gives you a fun excuse to compare photos afterwards.
If you’d rather explore as a group, How to Art with Friends is a self-guided booklet with ten activities. Some get you talking, and others ask you to respond through memories, music, emotions and hopes.
At the end of the route, the Imagination Lounge is a cosy space to browse, read, or draw and write about whatever stayed with you. It’s a nice way to end a visit, because you leave with a thought of your own instead of only a camera roll.
Through Gallery Wonders, the Gallery provides complimentary accessible programmes and transportation to underserved communities.
🗓️ Date: Running from 5 November 2026 to 26 September 2027
📍 Location: Level 4 Gallery, City Hall Wing, National Gallery Singapore
🎟️ Admission: General Admission pass required. Free for Singaporeans and PRs.
Get your General Admission pass, read up on the HOLD Collection before you meet that forest fire with your fingertips, and preview the Slow Art Guide so you know which headset to reach for first. If you’re bringing a community group, start with the Gallery’s Community Group Visits page or email community@nationalgallery.sg. The exhibition runs into September 2027, so bring someone who swears they “don’t get art”!
Photos and Visuals courtesy of National Gallery Singapore.
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