Malaysia’s Biggest Museum Will Be Opening in Sarawak!

Recent news has emerged that there will be a new Sarawak Museum Campus. It is going to be a hot tourist destination. And it is also going to be the biggest museum in Malaysia. The Sarawak Museum Campus is set to open to the public in 2020.


The Project

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This project is worth RM308 million and will be carried out in two stages. The first one will focus on the new museum campus as well as its annex building. The second stage will be working with the old Sarawak Museum and the ancillary buildings around it.

As of now, the progress is at 92% and is on track to its opening in 2020. Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture, Youth and Sports Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah has released a statement. The physical construction of the museum will be completed by March 2020. But it will take another year for the historical artefacts to be moved into the building.

Museums are different from other types of buildings of display because whatever is inside needs an accompanying write-up. Only about 20% of the artefacts are on display, with the rest in storage. This is to allow for proper research works to be carried out before it is displayed to the public.

A New Sarawak Museum

Swk Museum 01
Image credit: akdi.net

The new Sarawak Museum will feature interactive displays while 70% of the museum will focus on a more traditional exhibition. Visitors of the new museum can expect a showcase on how Sarawak was formed. A larger staff group is to be recruited to help with the management and administration of the museum once it is open.

Host families and visitors from schools can find it more interesting to go to the children’s gallery. The museum will also have seminars and briefings in the new auditorium. There will also be state-of-the-art conservation and laboratory facilities as a way to ensure proper handling of the artefacts. And this includes they are properly fumigated, researched, controlled, and cleaned before it reaches storage.

Our new museum will have an exhibition space of 6,500 square metres. It is expected to be the second largest South East Asian museum. The largest is the National Museum in Singapore.