Sharing Indonesian cultures through museums

Sharing Indonesian cultures through museums

As a former student of anthropology, Sarah Ball is quite familiar with Indonesian cultures. She had studied them during her college days in the United States.

However, during her recent visit to the National Museum in Central Jakarta as part of her vacation itinerary across Southeast Asia, Ball found herself still utterly amazed by the country's cultural diversity.

Yus Broersma, a member of the Indonesian Heritage Society (IHS), a non-profit organization which aims to promote Indonesia’s culture and heritage, led the free museum tour that day.

During the tour, which took place at the ethnography exhibit hall of eastern Indonesia, Ball mentioned that she knew Papua has more than 200 surviving local languages. Yus then explained that this number was due to geographical limitations which would later entrench tribalism on the island and ensure a complete separation between inhabiting tribes.

Their conversation advanced into how such tribalism had created a rather hostile relationship between neighboring tribes. This subject was followed by a lengthy discussion about other interesting topics such as beheading and head-hunting traditions, tribal wars, the spirits of dead ancestors, and phallic symbols.

Insightful conversation like this are a precious part of one's visit to a museum and that is what IHS is all about. It opens up opportunities for culture buffs to convene and share their interest in Indonesian cultures.

Despite the fact that the National Museum already has its own division for museum tours, the service provided by IHS focuses more on delivering multi-language explanation to patrons. It regularly runs free tours in English, French, Japan and Korean languages. A few other languages, like Dutch and Turkish, are also available by request.

“Currently we have around 45 volunteers for the tours; more than 20 of them are actively engaged as tour guides,” said Janneke Koster, a volunteer at IHS.

These tour guides must have participated in the three-month-long intensive tour guide course provided by the IHS. The course is available twice a year, and usually consists of around ten participants from more than eight different nationalities.

Another program initiated by IHS, dubbed the Museum Project, is one to consider for those looking to get involved in the country's cultural and history-centered institutions.

“The project started a long time ago. In the past we mainly did translation from old Dutch documents,” said Arnoud Haag, also a volunteer at IHS.

Presently, the project includes creating catalogs, inventories, publications and exhibitions.

In addition to the National Museum, IHS has also worked with the Textile Museum, the Fatahillah Museum and the Maritime Museum.

According to Haag, their activities are far from boring. The tasks that these volunteers are required to do give them the opportunity to learn new things and begin to see things somewhat differently.

Haag and Koster pointed out as an example their recent project with the Maritime Museum which got them to explore the building's two tall watchtower-like structures. And indeed, the area used to serve as a harbor during the Dutch colonial era.

“Oh, but they're not just watchtowers, they’re so much more! Did you know that those watchtowers were like the Greenwich of Southeast Asia?” Koster exclaimed excitedly.

Haag proceeded by pointing out a picture of the towers – also known as the Uitkijk Tower – in a book he had brought along which displays the structure adorned at the top with a peculiar device consisting of spheres and poles. It is said to be similar to the device used to track time in Greenwich, UK, many ages ago. The Uitkijk, it seems, performed a similar role as timekeeper for the harbor.

Time was an important thing for sailors back then, Haag explained, because it was used to determine a ship’s position on the map. To find the latitude vector, one could look up to the sky and analyze the position of the sun or star. Finding the longitude vector, however, requires the knowledge of time.

When a boat synchronized its watch with Uitkijk’s (around 106 degrees east) then sailed to Singapore; it would find its longitude by observing that the sun was already at its highest in Singapore (103 degrees east) before the supposed 12 p.m.