The National Museum of Singapore is a public museum dedicated to Singaporean art, culture and history. Located within the country's Civic District at the Downtown Core area, it is the oldest museum in the country, with its history dating back to when it was first established in 1849, starting out as a section of a library at the Singapore Institution as the Raffles Library and Museum. After several relocations over the next few decades, the museum moved to its current permanent site at Stamford Road in 1887. Between 1993 and March 2006, it was briefly known as the Singapore History Museum, before it subsequently returned to its present name that was first given in 1965. The museum preserves and interprets Singapore's social history, exploring the key events and people that have shaped the nation.
The National (formerly the Scottish National Gallery) is the national art gallery of Scotland. It is located on The Mound in central Edinburgh, close to Princes Street. The building was designed in a neoclassical style by William Henry Playfair, and first opened to the public in 1859. The gallery houses Scotland's national collection of fine art, spanning Scottish and international art from the beginning of the Renaissance up to the start of the 20th century.
The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is one of the oldest music schools in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV. The academy provides undergraduate and postgraduate training across instrumental performance, composition, jazz, musical theatre and opera, and recruits musicians from around the world, with a student community representing more than 50 nationalities. The academy's museum houses one of the world's most significant collections of musical instruments and artefacts, including stringed instruments by Stradivari, Guarneri, and members of the Amati family; manuscripts by Purcell, Handel and Vaughan Williams; and a collection of performing materials that belonged to leading performers. It is a constituent college of the University of London.
The Institut du Monde Arabe is an organisation founded in Paris in 1980 by France with 18 Arab countries to research and disseminate information about the Arab world and its cultural and spiritual values. The Institute was established as a result of a perceived lack of representation for the Arab world in France, and seeks to provide a secular location for the promotion of Arab civilization, art, knowledge, and aesthetics. Housed within the institution are a museum, library, auditorium, restaurant, offices and meeting rooms.
Tim Williams gained his BA at the University of Leicester in 1980. He was a seasonal site supervisor at Phil Barker’s excavations at Wroxeter between 1976-1982, the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust 1976-7 & 1980, Colchester Archaeological Trust 1980, and then the Department of Urban Archaeology (Museum of London) between 1981-1991. Between 1991-2002 he was Head of Archaeology Commissions at English Heritage, before joining University College, London in 2002.
His early focus on urban archaeology, initially in Roman Britain, and then during rescue excavations in the souks of Beirut developed into an interest in the Late Antique transition to the early Islamic city, which led to research on the Silk Roads to Central Asia. In 2001 he became the Director the UCL/Turkmen research project at the Silk Road city of Ancient Merv, Turkmenistan which subsequently led to establishing the Central Asian Archaeological Landscape (CAAL) project in 2018.
He is a member of the International Scientific Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management (ICAHM) and has participated on ICOMOS advisory missions and panels, especially with regard to the Silk Roads, developing the strategy for Silk Roads World Heritage nomination through a thematic study, and assisting with nomination dossiers. He also established the UCL/Northwest University (Xi'an) International Centre for Silk Roads Archaeology & Heritage in 2018.