Diary of a Student Intern

Within the NUS Museum, internships are offered twice annually and Diary of an NUS Museum Intern is a series of blog posts written by our interns about their experiences during the course of their internships. Working alongside their mentors, our interns have waded through tons of historical research, assisted in curatorial work, pitched in during exhibition installations and organised outreach events! If you would like to become our next intern, visit our internship page for more information!

Lim Tze Peng, "Trees", 2014

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Marcus Yee

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern is a series of blog posts written by our interns about their experiences during the course of their internships. Marcus Yee is a second-year student studying History and Earth Systems Science at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). During his time here as our Curatorial Intern, he assisted our curator Siddharta Perez, working on artist research and looking into notions of art and pedagogy. 

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Sin Melia

Sin Melia is a third-year Sociology major and Southeast Asian minor at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Working as an Exhibitions Interns for the South & Southeast Asian Collection, Melia was involved in the curatorial processes of the on-going exhibition another diorama.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Rachel Lim

Rachel Lim is a third-year English Literature major at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Science. As a research assistant for the forthcoming Anniversary Lecture 2020, Rachel is involved in the research of the circumstances surrounding the 1959 donation of artworks to the university by the Indian Government.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Hannah Nor’Hisham

Hannah is currently a JC1 student at Temasek Junior college. She joined the NUS Museum for three weeks as part of Temasek Junior College’s Work Attachment Programme. During her time here as an NUS Museum intern, Hannah was tasked to assist with the cataloging of the NUS Museum’s Resource Library, she also shares with us her take on a number of artworks from our ‘Radio Malaya: Abridged Conversations about Art’ exhibition.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Charmaine Lee

Charmaine is currently a JC1 student at Temasek Junior college. She joined the NUS Museum for three weeks as part of Temasek Junior College’s Work Attachment Programme. In this post, Charmaine shares with us her experience studying and understanding our exhibitions and cataloging our NUS Museum’s Resource Library.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Nichole Lim

Nichole Lim is a fourth-year Geography student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Together with Stephanie, Nichole has assisted in research and execution of various outreach projects during her time here as our Museum Outreach intern.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Stephanie Lauw

Stephanie Lauw is a fourth-year English Literature student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. During her time here as our Museum Outreach intern, Stephanie assisted in research and execution of various outreach projects.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Nurmiyati

Nurmiyati is a third-year Political Science student from the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our Baba House Outreach intern, Yati has assisted in the research of various Baba House programmes, she was also involved in the exhibition-making process for ‘Glossaries of the Straits Chinese Homemaking’.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Tan Jia Yi

Tan Jia Yi is a second-year NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences student, majoring in History. During her time here as our Exhibitions Intern, Jiayi has assisted our museum curator Sidd Perez in our prep-room projects ‘After Ballads’ and ‘Of Place and Paradox’.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Roy Ng

Roy Ng is a final-year NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences students, majoring in History and minoring in Art History. As part of his internship, he served as Research Assistant to Dr Priya Maholay-Jaradi, whom the Museum is collaborating with for a forthcoming 2019 programme.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Terri Teo

Terri is a fourth-year English Literature student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our Exhibition Management and Programmes Intern, Terri assisted her supervisor, NUS Museum curator, Sidd Perez, in exhibitions and programming.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Ng Jing Yi

Jing Yi is a second-year student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. During her time here as our Museum Outreach intern, Jing Yi assisted in research, conceptualisation and execution of the museum’s outreach programmes.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Ker Wei Qi

Wei Qi is a third-year English Literature student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Wei Qi assisted the collections team on various projects and exhibitions during her time here as our Collections Intern.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Eunice Lim

Eunice is a third-year Global Studies student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our Exhibition Management and Curatorial Research Intern, Eunice assisted her supervisor, NUS Museum curator, Foo Su Ling, in exhibitions and curatorial projects. 

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Jaclyn Chong

Jaclyn is a fourth-year Theatre Studies student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our Exhibition Management and Programmes Intern, Jaclyn assisted her supervisor, NUS Museum curator, Sidd Perez, in exhibitions and programming.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Harith Redzuan

Harith Redzuan is a second-year Southeast Asian Studies student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our  Programming and Exhibition Management Intern, Harith assisted his supervisor, Siddharta Perez, in exhibitions and curatorial projects. 
I Love Prep-rooms and I want to be a Prep-room. 

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Sara Lau

Sara Lau is a third-year Sociology student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, with a second major in Southeast Asia Studies. As our  Programming and Exhibition Management Intern, Sara assisted her supervisor, Siddharta Perez, in exhibitions and curatorial projects. 

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Jolene Teo

Jolene Teo is a third-year History student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our  Museum Archival Research Intern, Jolene researched on and compiled a bibliography of writings related to William Willetts, the second curator of the Art Museum in the University of Malaya, researching and compiling materials on the University of Malaya, as well as researching and compiling a bibliography of writings related to Roxanna Brown and Constance Sheares.  

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Shen Yunni

Shen Yunni is a third-year Political Science student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our  Baba House Outreach Intern, Yunni assisted in the research, planning, and marketing of the Baba House Docent Training Programme and other Outreach programmes, as well as assisting with the Baba House tour logistics and house operations.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Michelle Lee

Michelle Lee is a third-year Anthropology student at the Yale-NUS College. As our  Radio Malaya Exhibition Research Intern, Michelle built on existing research generated for the exhibition Radio Malaya: Abridged Conversations about Art, as well as conceptualizing video interviews with personalities featured in the exhibition.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Kwok Jia Yang

Kwok Jia Yang is a first-year student at the Yale-NUS College. As our  Radio Malaya Exhibition Research Intern, Jia Yang researched on and compiled a bibliography of writings related to Jimmy Ong, a Singaporean artist, assisted in the accessioning of the Jimmy Ong “Shoebox Photographs”, and researched on and conceived of an interview project of the Dragon Court period. 

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Johann Yamin

Johann Yamin is a third-year Communications and New Media student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, with a minor in Film Production and Art History. As our  Radio Malaya Exhibition Research Intern, Johann assisted with curatorial research and exhibition development for Radio Malaya: Abridged Conversations About Art, as well as consolidating research materials from the Vietnam War Art collection.

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Ho See Wah

Ho See Wah is a fourth-year Global Studies student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our  Programmes Research Intern, See Wah assisted in the conceptualisation and research of upcoming programmes related to the Museum’s Vietnam War Art collection. 

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Hor Jen Yee

Hor Jen Yee is a third-year Psychology student at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. As our Museum Outreach Intern, Jen Yee assisted in Outreach administrative tasks, as well as assisting in the conceptualistion, research, and execution of upcoming Outreach programmes. 

Diary of an NUS Museum Intern: Guo Xiu Jin

Guo Xiu Jin is a third-year Architecture student at the NUS School of Design & Environment. As our Collections Intern, Jin worked on exploring possible improvements to Collections Online, which is NUS Museum’s online database of artefacts. 

Revisit the cabinet of curiosities in today’s museums

Calling all curious minds! Are you passionate about art, visual culture, and museum practice?

Museum Lab is your gateway to understanding the foundations of seeing, displaying and sharing art in fresh and critical ways. This year’s theme centres on the Cabinet of Curiosities—a historical form of collecting that flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, emerging from the intersections of travel, trade, and early colonial encounters. Often eclectic and non-specialised, these cabinets were less about systematic taxonomy and more about the imaginative ordering of the world, shaped by personal curiosity and cultural projection. As precursors to the modern museum, they not only reflected an early impulse to gather and display but also exposed the entangled politics of knowledge production, ownership, and wonder.

Revisiting the cabinet through contemporary curatorial frameworks offers fertile ground for critical reflection. It invites us to question how systems of classification, spectacle, and authority persist in institutional practices, and how they might be reimagined. When viewed through the lens of archival theory, the cabinet becomes not merely a container of objects, but a structure animated by desire, absence, and the compulsion to preserve. In this sense, the cabinet aligns with the post-critical museological turn: privileging the fragmentary, the contingent, and the polysemous over the definitive and the didactic.

From 24 June to 11 July 2025, across six sessions, through workshops, field trips and guest lectures, Museum Lab participants will engage with the cabinet as both metaphor and method, opening possibilities for curatorial practices that are speculative, dialogic, and responsive, while foregrounding the affective and epistemological dimensions of collecting, and the complex temporalities that underpin both archives and exhibitions.

The programme will culminate in the opportunity to develop and present a proposal for a curatorial or programmatic intervention at NUS Museum.

Application Deadline: 11 June 2025

Confirmation of Candidates: 16 June 2025

Participants must commit to the entire duration of the Museum Lab and attend all four weeks in person.

Places are limited, so submit your registration soon!

APPLY NOW

About Museum Lab

Designed to provide participants with foundational knowledge and practical skills, Museum Lab fosters critical engagement with art, heritage, and exhibition-making. Through a structured series of lectures, workshops, and discussions led by artists, curators and practitioners, participants will engage with a range of perspectives and methodologies. Each iteration of Museum Lab will culminate in a curatorial exercise, where participants apply their learning by developing proposals for exhibitions, public programmes, or interpretive materials. This programme is organised by NUS Museum and supported by the Cultural Matching Fund (2024-2026).

FAQs

Eligibility

Students from NUS and other Institutes of Higher Learning are welcome to apply for Museum Lab. Recent graduates within the last 18 months are also eligible to participate in the Museum Lab. You must be based in Singapore for entire duration of the Lab.

How long are the sessions?

There will be three sessions each week from 24 June to 3 July starting from 10am. They will end in the afternoon, depending on the activity/field trip/lecture/workshop scheduled for the session. The final project proposal presentation will take place on 11 July. A more detailed schedule will be provided if you are selected to participate in Museum Lab.

Can I apply if I have other commitments (e.g. holiday plans, extra-curricular activities) during the work period?

Yes, as long as you are still able to complete the tasks required of you within the duration of the Museum Lab. You must be able to attend all sessions of the Museum Lab in person.

Do I need to have an art/museum-related academic background to apply?

No, we welcome students from all academic backgrounds to apply. However, make sure that you are able to demonstrate interest and capability for museum practice and visual cultures.