Beyond the Collections: Identity Construction at the National Museum of Indonesia

Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds) © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5 Beyond the collections: Identity construction at the National Museum of Indonesia M.K. Rizqika Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia ABSTRACT: The National Museum of Indonesia is one of the products from the long history of the Dutch colonial ruling in the Indonesian archipelago. This is the first and big- gest museum established in 1778 by the Dutch East Indies government in Indonesia. Based on the collections, the museum was initially set out to educate the local people in the context of colonial history. The colonial government’s practice of acquiring objects reflects the colonization of the local people. Following the independence of Indonesia in 1945, the museum changed its discourse. The postcolonial reinterpretation of imperial history affected and changed curatorial practices in the museum. Through museums, Indonesia can construct a new identity that is free from the shadow of the colonial government. Today, the museum is changing and focusing on how to represent the cultural diversity of Indonesia, which is an enriching and the most important element in showing the new identity of Indonesia. Muse- ums can connect the past and the present for a better future. This article aims to address the underlying and interrelated aspects that bring all of these elements to reveal the complexity of today’s identity. 1 INTRODUCTION Postcolonial studies challenge the outdated view about colonies (Eastern world), which is full of stigma, biased, and narrow. In Indonesia, a nation which was formerly a Dutch colony, traces of colonialism can still be found. One of them is the National Museum of Indonesia. This article is aimed at comparing two permanent exhibition rooms in the National Museum of Indonesia, namely the Room of Historical Relics in Building A (old building) and the Room of Gold Ethnography Repertoire in Building B (new building), from the viewpoint of the postcolonial theory. The exhibition’s arrangements of both rooms are compared to show how the Indonesian Government strives to liberate itself from the identity as a former colony and how it has started to build its own identity. A qualitative approach is used in writing this article. In order to obtain data for this article, the author conducted direct observation in the Room of Historical Relics in Building A and the Room of Gold Ethnography Repertoire in Building B of the National Museum. The author also conducted bibliographical studies and unstructured interviews with several museum staff. The data were enriched by the author’s own experience as a curator in the National Museum of Indonesia. 1.1 Museum and construction Etymologically, the word “colony” originates from the Latin word colonia, meaning a land for cultivation or habitat (Sutrisno and Putranto, 2008). Loomba (2003) described that origi- nally the term colony referred to the Romans who lived outside their country, but were still registered as citizens of Rome and related to their homeland (Lubis, 2015, p. 127). Afterward, the term developed, and it was associated to the concept of power and conquest, that is, the settlers who wished to conquer and dominate the colonies. This incited problems, such as oppression and control of human and natural resources. Said (1993) indicated that this view 217 motivated the Western people to dominate distant Eastern countries. They considered the natives of the colonies as barbaric and primitive; thus, they had to be civilized according to the Western culture. This view was legitimized in several ways by Western academics, for example, by producing numerous writings about Eastern world and by establishing museums to fortify the Western power over the colony. In this regard, Bouquet (2012) described that several ethnographic museums started to be founded in the 19th century in Europe. One of them was the Royal Danish Ethnographic Museum, established in 1825. Collecting unique objects from distant colonized countries was a prestigious matter among European elites. The collections were exhibited and interpreted in the national context of European countries. Most of them were daily appliances from Asia, Africa, Australia, and America. They represented the superior values of the Western culture over the colony’s culture. Afterward, the natives actively fought against the colonists. Said (1993) wrote that physi- cal confrontations broke out in the 19th century in countries such as Indonesia and Algeria, which resulted in their independence. Much effort was also made in defending the national culture and reinforcing the national identity. Such situations were the focus of postcolonial academicians. Lubis (2015) divided the postcolonial concept into two main aspects. The first aspect regards the postcolonial as a period after the colonial era (colonialization). One of the important accounts during this period was the introduction of cultural elements or the system by the colonists to be imitated or applied as new elements by the natives. The postcolonial is a study about the effects of colonialism after the colonial period. In addition, new forms of colonialism practices were studied, for example, the colonization of minority groups by dominant groups. Academicians of this theory include Frantz Fanon and Gayatri C. Spivak. The second aspect of postcolonial theory is considered as the continuation of the discus- sion on the previous aspect. Postcolonialism is a form of confrontation against the domina- tion of colonists’ thought by the Western world over colony culture. This study criticizes the inequality of Western-dominated knowledge, social, and cultural matters—Western hegemony—resulting in a bias in viewing the Eastern or colony culture, particularly in early modern centuries. Edward Said is one of the figures who avidly expressed his view about the conspiracy of colonists’ or orientalists’ power and knowledge over the Eastern world. With regard to identity in the present time, Maunati (2004) highlighted that the concept of identity and identity itself are viewed as the result of dynamic interaction between context (history) and construction. Identity might change in different time and space. Identity is con- tinuously formed and transformed, which is related to how it is represented or highlighted in the surrounding cultural system. With regard to nationality, Woolf (1996) wrote that national identity is an abstract concept, which combines individual sense with a socio-political unit (Graham, Ashworth, Tunbridge, 2005). It is very interesting to relate the arrangement of the exhibition in the National Museum of Indonesia to Said’s thoughts about orientalism, as indicated by King (2001), which are related to three phenomena (Lubis, 2015, p. 139). First, an orientalist taught, wrote, and examined the Eastern world. An orientalist can be an anthropologist, archaeologist, histo- rian, philologist, or anyone from other disciplines. In its early period, members of the Bata- viaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (the pioneer of the National Museum of Indonesia) were the elites from diverse professions, such as bureaucrats, anthropologists, historians, and missionaries, who were interested in studying cultures in various parts of the Dutch East Indies. Second, orientalism refers to the Western and Eastern thoughts, which are based on different ontology and epistemology. Therefore, articles on research results or expedition reports written by members of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen (here- inafter referred to as BG) were said to be bipolar in nature and were divided into two per- spectives, namely Eastern and Western. Third, orientalism can be seen as a legal institution, which was established to conquer the East; to have interest, power, and authority to make representations about the East; to justify the view about the East; and to describe, teach, publicize, position, and master it. BG was the institution to facilitate the various interests of the orientalists in the past. 218 Pearce (1994) indicated that the collections in a museum are the results of the process of collecting. There is always a relationship between collections and the ideas that museum administrators want to convey, as Impey and Macgregor (1985) pointed out “... the nature of the collections themselves and the reasons and the more obscure psychological or social reasons” (Pearce, 1994, p. 194). The collections are bound with various elements in the history of their former owners and in how they are acquired by the museum. Pearce (1994) wrote that a curator must comprehend aspects of history and the nature of the collections, as well as their background information, in order to have better assumptions about the value and knowledge inherent in them. The collections have their own initial contexts, and the museum can provide new contexts to them. Mullen (1994) explained that museums play a critical role in constructing cultural knowledge. He wrote: “That role needs not be confined to preserving and disseminating established, legiti- mated cultural knowledge; it can also be one of the facilitation for the social construction of a broad range of cultural knowledge, and so contribute to the cultural empowerment of a broad range of people.” 1.2 National Museum of Indonesia from time to time Since its establishment on 24 April 1778, Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Weten- schappen or the Batavia Society for Arts

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