Collecting Contemporary Singapore: Plastic

Submission Details

Our 2024 theme for Collecting Contemporary Singapore focuses on plastic and sustainability, in conjunction with the Plastic: Remaking Our World exhibition. Plastics have shaped our daily lives like no other material: from packaging to footwear, from household goods to furniture, from automobiles to architecture. At the same time, sustainability is a key contemporary issue that informs the way we live.

We invite you to contribute your objects – and their stories – focusing on the following themes. In addition to archiving relevant contributions, there may also be future avenues to present or display these stories and objects at the National Museum of Singapore.

• Plastic objects that have a uniquely Singaporean origin, design or use (e.g. Made-in-Singapore products; objects designed in Singapore, such as the Unica stool; vintage Tupperware and similar food containers)
• Initiatives to save the environment in Singapore (e.g. objects from environmental campaigns such as Keep Singapore Clean, including posters, brochures, memorabilia etc.; objects from climate change events such as posters, placards etc.)
• Sustainable living in Singapore (e.g. innovations that helped you to “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”; objects made of alternative environmentally-friendly materials such as bioplastics)

Please note that unsolicited donations sent through the mail or otherwise without prior correspondence with our curators will not be accepted.

For further queries, please contact the museum’s Curatorial team at NHB_NMS_Curatorial@nhb.gov.sg.

About Collecting Contemporary Singapore

The National Museum is expanding our public engagement efforts to crowdsource objects and related stories/photos from residents in Singapore, so as to broaden our contemporary collection. We will be focusing on different themes each year to encourage Singaporeans to contribute to this project and reflect upon life in Singapore in recent times.

These contributions may reveal different perspectives of contemporary Singapore that will shape and inform the curation of the museum’s future exhibitions. Selected objects may also be featured in relevant exhibitions presented by the National Museum.

If you have other objects that you are keen to contribute to the National Museum of Singapore but which do not fit the ongoing theme(s) of our current open call(s), please email your story and photos of the object to NHB_NMS_Curatorial@nhb.gov.sg for our curators’ assessment.