About
Where currents meet,
cultures meet.
The Straits has never been one place. Connected by water and a way of life — the shipping lanes, port towns, and trading households where the cultures of Southeast Asia and beyond have long mixed, borrowed, and made each other anew.
01 / THE THESIS
Defined not by borders,
but by movement.
For five centuries, the waters between Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and the islands beyond carried more than cargo. They carried people, recipes, looms, faiths, songs, and the small everyday objects that hold a culture together.
What we now call Peranakan — Baba-Nyonya, Chitty, Jawi — and the wider, less-named everyday culture of port households and back-lane kitchens was shaped here. Not by any single tradition, but by the long conversation between them.
The Straits Museum holds that conversation. We do not treat heritage as a thing to be preserved behind glass. We treat it as a practice that continues every time someone cooks, makes, hosts, or remembers in the language of the Straits.
02 / A LIVING MUSEUM
Where heritage meets
everyday life.
A living museum does not end at the wall label. It is set across kitchens, workshops, dining tables, and quiet shophouse rooms. It is built from objects that are still used, recipes that are still cooked, and stories that are still being told.
We work from conserved shophouses — buildings that are themselves part of the story — to bring together cooks, makers, writers, curators, and visitors. The aim is not nostalgia. It is to make the cultures of the Straits accessible and present.
03 / WHAT WE'RE BUILDING
Straits Made
Straits Made is the Museum Store and The Straits Museum's collection and editions arm. It revives Straits material culture by commissioning contemporary editions of the porcelain, furniture and domestic objects that historically furnished Straits shophouses. Alongside these editions, the Museum may acquire original Straits objects from collections abroad, including in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, subject to provenance, title and Board acquisition review, and return them to Singapore for research, documentation and display. Original collection objects are held by the Museum and are not retail stock.
All operating surplus from the Museum Store is retained by The Straits Museum Ltd and applied exclusively to its institutional objects, principally the acquisition, documentation and display of Straits objects. No surplus is distributed for private gain.
The Museum
Exhibitions, residencies, salons, and dinners set across the shophouses. A rolling calendar of installations, conversations, and meals, all built in dialogue with chefs, curators, and communities from across the region.
04 / HELD IN TRUST
A non-profit, by design.
The Straits Museum is structured as a Company Limited by Guarantee — a non-profit form recognised in Singapore. Everything the Museum earns and receives is held for a single purpose: the long-term stewardship of Straits culture. No surplus is distributed for private gain.
05 / AN INVITATION
The Straits is a conversation.
Join us.
If you are a chef, maker, curator, writer, host, or partner who works in or alongside the cultures of the Straits, we would like to hear from you. The Museum is being built in dialogue with the people who keep these traditions alive.
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