Abstract

The Peranakan are a minority group in Southeast Asia whose legacy has provided Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) with a collection of unique cultural material. This article contends that the inclusion of the Peranakan within the ACM was an iterative and non-teleological process, evidenced by the fact that the Peranakan were not included in the government’s original cultural strategies to link Singaporean ancestral cultures to contemporary Asian values. This article further argues that the narratives representing the Peranakan within the ACM have shifted from a focus on their historical and artistic legacy to positioning them as a vibrant, inclusive living culture with the potential to symbolically represent what it means to be a Singaporean, reflecting a broader social change in the small island nation.