The Penang Museum is housed in a lovely old building which was once the Penang Free School (it dates back partly to 1896, partly to 1906: and the building, anyway, is only half there - the rest of it was bombed into oblivion during World War II). The museum is home to a large and impressive collection of artefacts relating to the island, its history, and its many races. We visited it on a somewhat rushed afternoon, and so weren’t able to devote as much time to it as we would have liked to, but did manage to get a look at part of the collection. Among the museum’s best sections are the ones on old paintings, photographs, and an assortment of articles relating to Penang’s ethnic communities - the Chinese (including a section on the kongsi, or clanhouses, of the Chinese), the Malays, the Indians, Eurasians, British (there’s a large section on the East India Company), the Japanese, and more. And yes, the items on display are not just boring old paintings and photographs - there’s plenty more. Among the many, many articles on display are trishaws, jinrickshaws, hawker’s stalls, costumes, jewellery, weapons, photographs, utensils, dioramas and models, furniture (plenty of beautiful dark wood chests and chairs, inlaid with exquisite mother-of-pearl, and even opium beds - on which Chinese opium addicts would loll about smoking away to glory). Every ethnic community is represented; there’s a large section on Nyonyas-Babas (the Straits Chinese), their costumes, customs and weddings (including plenty of wedding photographs, dowry chests, a gorgeously bedecked wedding bed, and samples of exquisite Nyonya embroidery and beadwork).
Other highlights: a replica of the will made by Francis Light, the Englishman who claimed Penang for the Crown and founded Georgetown; ceramics, opium pipes, betel-nut sets and spittoons; a recreation of an old tuck-shop and a traditional room in a Chinese home; Japanese weaponry from World War II; and so on. On the whole, a neat snapshot - in fairly great detail - of Penang, its history and evolution, and its multicultural composition. There’s a computer screen too, on which you can see more details about the museum and Penang, but some of it was still under construction when we visited.
Admission to the Penang Museum is free.