Step into the hushed halls of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) and you’ll find yourself transported not just through time, but into a different state of mind. The museum’s Scholars Gallery, now reimagined for the first time since 2015, invites visitors to experience Elegant Sounds: Music, Craft, and the Literati — a multisensory exhibition that doesn’t just show you the past; it lets you hear, touch, and feel it.
Opening 23 May 2025, Elegant Sounds is centred on the qin, a seven-string zither that has resonated through over two thousand years of Chinese history. But this isn’t an exhibition about instruments. It’s about the inner world of the Chinese literati — scholars who believed music was a path to moral clarity, emotional refinement, and spiritual cultivation.
ACM sets the scene with close to 100 objects, from antique qins to brush paintings, rare music books, calligraphy scrolls, and ceramics. The gallery has been redesigned to feel like a scholar’s personal studio — quiet, contemplative, and visually poetic. This is a space where the boundaries between music, philosophy, and daily life gently dissolve.
And while the objects themselves hold deep cultural weight, it’s the interactive elements that truly bring the narrative to life. At the Voices of the Qin installation, visitors can try plucking a real qin that’s been integrated with sound tech, producing notes that echo gently through the space. Throughout the gallery, recordings by master musician Dr Kee Chee Koon add emotional texture, while a short film featuring qin craftsman Ning Qunhui shows the painstaking process of carving and tuning each instrument by hand.
This experience is more than a visual showcase — it’s a layered, atmospheric encounter designed to slow you down. Live performances, workshops, and soundscapes make this a living gallery, not just a historical one.
It’s no accident that ACM chose this moment to relaunch the Scholars Gallery. In an age of digital noise and fast-scrolling attention spans, Elegant Sounds offers something increasingly rare: stillness. The qin’s soft tones and the scholars’ philosophy remind us that refinement isn’t about prestige — it’s about presence.
Visit the Elegant Sounds exhibition at Asian Civilisations Museum and discover how ancient music still speaks to modern minds.