The museum's early years were shaped by the Sabah Society, the civic organization that lobbied for its creation. E. J. Berwick served as the first curator, managing Woolley's bequest and the growing stream of donations from a public that seemed to understand, even in the mid-1960s, that Sabah's diversity needed a permanent home. In 1966, the museum came under the administration of the State Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, a move that gave it institutional backing but also tied its fortunes to government budgets and political priorities. The transfer to the present hilltop site came on 11 April 1984, when the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Malaysia's constitutional monarch, officially opened the new complex. The building's architecture draws on the longhouse forms of Sabah's indigenous communities, its rooflines echoing the sweeping curves of Rungus and Murut traditional structures.

The complex is far more than a building with exhibits. An ethnobotanic garden catalogues the plants that indigenous communities have used for medicine, construction, and food for centuries. A heritage village reconstructs the built environment of Sabah's diverse ethnic groups. A small zoo introduces visitors to the fauna of Borneo, from proboscis monkeys to sun bears. Inside the main building, the Sabah Art Gallery occupies its own wing. Other galleries cover Islamic civilization, archaeology and regional history, natural history, and a notable collection of ceramics and brassware that traces trade networks stretching from China to the Malay Archipelago. One exhibit that draws particular attention is a whale skeleton, reportedly the largest on display anywhere in Malaysia.

What the Sabah Museum captures, perhaps better than any single institution in Malaysian Borneo, is the sheer density of cultural exchange that has defined this region for millennia. The ceramics gallery alone tells a story of Chinese, Malay, Filipino, and indigenous trade relationships that predated European colonization by centuries. The Islamic civilization exhibit documents the arrival and adaptation of Islam in a region where animist traditions and Christian missions also took deep root. Sabah sits at the intersection of the Sulu Sea, the South China Sea, and the Celebes Sea, a geographic position that guaranteed contact with virtually every maritime civilization in Southeast Asia. The museum does not simplify this complexity. It presents it in layers, letting visitors build their own understanding of a place that has never been just one thing.

Bukit Istana Lama, the hill on which the museum sits, translates roughly as "Old Palace Hill," a reference to a former gubernatorial residence. The site commands sweeping views of Kota Kinabalu's waterfront and, on clear days, the islands of Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park scattered across the bay. The approach to the museum passes through the ethnobotanic garden, where labeled specimens offer a botanical vocabulary for understanding how the rainforest has sustained human life on Borneo. Inside, the air-conditioned galleries provide relief from the equatorial heat, but it is the outdoor spaces, the heritage village, the garden paths, the hilltop panoramas, that give the museum its distinctive character. This is not a place that asks you to stand behind glass and read labels. It asks you to walk through a landscape and recognize that culture and ecology are inseparable on this island.