Asian Civilisations Museum will host Crosscurrents, a major new exhibition featuring masterpieces from the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman empires.
Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum is set to welcome 100 Islamic treasures from the Musée du Louvre, marking a major cultural moment for the city’s arts calendar.
Titled Crosscurrents: Masterpieces of Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Art from the Musée du Louvre, the exhibition will run from 19 June 2026 to 24 January 2027. Taking place across ACM’s Islamic Art Gallery and Design Gallery, the show brings together rare objects from one of the world’s most important museum collections, offering visitors a closer look at the artistic legacy of three powerful empires.
The exhibition focuses on the Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman empires, which shaped vast parts of Asia between the 16th and 18th centuries. Their influence extended across trade, diplomacy, design, architecture and material culture, helping to define what historians often refer to as the Islamic world. This broad cultural sphere stretched across West, Central and South Asia, connecting courts, cities and communities through shared ideas and artistic exchange.
Visitors will be able to view a wide range of works, including illustrated manuscripts, ceramics, metalwork, decorative objects and pieces once associated with royal collections. These items reflect the refinement, craftsmanship and global outlook of the period, when artists, patrons and merchants helped visual ideas travel across continents.
Adding a Singapore perspective, ACM will place Southeast Asian objects from its own collection alongside the Louvre loans. This approach creates a wider conversation between regions, highlighting how Southeast Asia was part of a larger network of maritime trade, cultural exchange and diplomatic contact.
The exhibition also explores how artistic inspiration moved long before modern technology made global connection instant. Patterns, techniques, materials and motifs travelled through trade routes, courtly exchanges and religious networks, shaping objects that still speak across cultures today.
Crosscurrents: Masterpieces of Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Art from the Musée du Louvre is one of ACM’s most significant international collaborations and offers a rare chance to see Louvre masterpieces in Singapore.
Admission is free for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents, while foreign residents and tourists can purchase tickets priced from SGD 25.
Where: Asian Civilisations Museum, 1 Empress Place, Singapore
When: Open daily from 10am to 7pm
Contact: www.acm.nhb.gov.sg