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National Library Exhibitions

Highlights

Discover the highlights of The Albatross File: Singapore’s Independence Declassified.

Last updated 24 July 2026

Explore the space:

Floor plan with labeled areas: Room, Chatbook, Records, Atlas, and Entrance. There's a "You are here" marker near the entrance.
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Atlas: Time-travel across the moments that led to Separation.

A dimly lit museum exhibit with information panels on the walls and a large circular display table in the center.
Visitors inside a dimly lit museum interact with exhibits and read informational panels along the walls.

Watch the Singapore story unfold across space and time with the Spacetime Clock, which offers a bird's-eye view of the events leading to separation through immersive projections.

Step into history at the Atlas Wall – where speeches, turning points and key moments unfold along a timeline you can explore at your own pace.

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Room: Be right there as it happened.

A group of people sit on stools in a dark room, watching a large black-and-white screen showing a crowded event.

Take a seat at the heart of the story, as Singapore’s Separation comes to life – through reenactments, archival clips, and never-before-released recordings, seen, heard and felt through a sweeping panoramic screen.

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Records: Stories, voices and documents from a defining era

The room features illuminated display panels, a red wall segment, and exhibits with text and images.
Six people stand in front of a large interactive screen displaying historical content and the question "Why didn't the merger work?"

Listen to Singapore’s founding leaders reflect on the pressures and choices of this turbulent period, and feel the weight of the decisions that led to independence.

Dive deeper into newly-declassified documents and notes with interactive screens, and uncover layers of context that add new meaning to our story.

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ChatBook: Got questions on our separation? Ask away.

People interact with touch screens in a dark room featuring a large Independence Day display and circular timeline on the wall.
People standing and sitting in a dimly lit, modern room with display screens and circular wall graphics.

Your personal research station, powered by Gen AI. Drawing from rich sources spanning publications to NLB’s own repository of images, videos, oral histories and articles, ChatBook offers new insights to the separation story.