The National University of Singapore has an exhibition on the making of the museum in Malaya, based on a range of colonial archives. If anyone has a chance to visit (it runs to Jan 2012) please post a comment below. It sounds interesting
Camping and Tramping Through the Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya
13 Jan 2011 – 2012
NUS Museum New*
The term Camping and Tramping is inspired by a lesser known 19th century document compiled by a British officer describing the field work and travails of his time with the colonial office in Malaya. This exhibition traces the rise of the Museum in British Malaya not just as an indicator of power over what was gazed upon as the exotic but by acknowledging that the very advent of the Museum resulted in a staging ground for a project of accumulation and the ordering of knowledge. Writings and artefacts have been mobilized from the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (NUS), Asian Civilizations Museum, National Museum of Singapore, National Library Board Singapore, Singapore Press Holdings, Singapore National Archives, NUS Museum, and the Ivan Polunin and Mohammad Din Mohammad collections.
Museum Volunteers, JMM 