Implications for the development

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Jennifer R. CASH 
PhD, School of Humanities, Nanyang Technological University (Singapore)
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Germany)
email: [e-mail]
A SOUTH-EAST/SOUTH-EAST CONVERSATION ABOUT MEMORY, HERITAGE, 
AND MUSEUMS(REFLECTIONS ON THE PERANAKAN MUSEUM AND MNEIN)
Rezumat. O conversație Sud-Est / Sud-Est despre memorie, patrimoniu și muzee (reflecții 
privind Muzeul Peranakan și MNEIN).
Articolul prezintă relația memorie-patrimoniu-muzeu din 
perspectiva unui studiu comparativ: Muzeul Peranakan (TPN) din Singapore și Muzeul Național de 
Etnografie și Istorie Naturală (MNEIN) din Republica Moldova, aducând în orizontul cercetării noi 
probleme ce pot marca viitorul instituțiilor muzeale, memoriei și patrimoniului cultural, precum
a)trecerea sub tăcere a unor aspecte sociale și culturale și b) rolul etnografiei în medierea relației me-
morie-patrimoniu. Autoarea articulează, în dialogul Sud-Est / Sud-Est, potențialul muzeelor locale/
sătești, acestea având deseori o viziune mai flexibilă în redarea valorilor etno-culturale decât muzeele 
naționale sau cele comerciale. Autoarea pledează pentru apropierea mai directă a celor două tradiții 
regionale, reprezentate de TPN și MNIM, fapt care ar face posibilă explorarea viitorului etnografiei în 
muzee dintr-o perspectivă multilaterală.
Cuvinte-cheie
: etnografie, memorie, muzeu, Singapore, Moldova.
Introduction. 
In this paper, I offer some remarks about Singapore’s Peranakan Museum. This 
museum is a young museum, established in 2008 on the basis of a Peranakan exhibit within 
the country’s Asian Civilisations Museum. The Peranakan Museum (TPM) is Singapore’s only 
national-level ethnographic museum, however, when it reopens from a 2-year renovation (2019–
2021), it is unlikely to promote itself as “ethnographic”. The intention, as of early 2020, is for the 
renovated museum to emphasize its collections within the framework of “decorative arts”. The 
shift reflects, in part, the limitations posed by the “ethnographic” label: Peranakan individuals 
and communities feel detached from the ethnographic conception of the museum because it 
conveys a past which many do not, or no longer, recognize as “theirs”. The curatorial staff also 
expresses the limitations of the “ethnographic” framework for exhibiting and exploring contem-
porary aspects of Peranakan culture, especially in the domains of modern artwork.
TPM is, for me, a fascinating case for discussing the future of museums, memory, and heri-
tage. There are two aspects of this triangular relationship that I would like to discuss. The first is 
about what it was like to visit TPM in 2017 and 2018 – right before it closed for renovation. On 
my visits in these years, with the eyes of a foreign anthropologist, I was struck by the tremendous 
silences on very many aspects of Peranakan society and culture. I wondered if these silences were 
intentional, and suspected that I was entering a realm of deep cultural intimacy. In this zone,
I felt that the museum, as a “place of memory” told too little about the lived past. I felt that 
more
ethnography would have improved the exhibits, but also wondered if this expectation (that more 
exposure of intimate social and cultural details was necessarily better) was the lingering effect 
of my training in a discipline that was so deeply entwined with colonialism. After all, what right 
does a “guest” have to demand a detailed accounting of the social and cultural practices of the 
“host”, in either the past or the present?
The second aspect of the relationship between memory, heritage, and museums to discuss in 
the context of TPM relates to its renovation. That is: has “ethnography” reached its limits, not 
only in Singapore, but elsewhere too, for mediating future relations of memory and heritage?
I hope not, but I want to bring it into discussion in this forum. Part of the answer clearly has to 
reflect on what “ethnography” means within a museum context, to curators, visitors, and those 

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Conferință științifică internațională, Chișinău, 22-23 septembrie 2020, ediția a II-a
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represented: is it describing “a people” (
ethnos
) in terms of the characteristics and traits of their 
material and spiritual culture? Or is it something more flexible that can convey the dynamism of 
cultural identities and the changing values of culture?