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elebrating its 122nd anniversary this month, the management of Radya Pustaka Museum, which is rich with antique and historical collections in Surakarta, Central Java, pledged to improve the museum, to make it more attractive to visitors and more resistant against theft.

Head of Surakarta Culture and Tourism Agency Widdy Srihanto said the city administration planned to renovate and revitalize Radya Pustaka with a total fund of Rp 3 billion (US$312,336), partly from the state budget, in a multiphase scheme.

The first stage of the renovation process will start in 2013 with an initial budget of Rp 1 billion.

According to Radya Pustaka committee secretary Djaka Darjata, the condition of the museum at present is of concern, especially because of its limited income.

“We have a very limited number of visitors. Those visiting are mostly students,” Djaka said, Tuesday.

Annually, Djaka added, the museum had only earned Rp 15 million from ticket sales. The museum’s entrance fee is Rp 2,500. On average, the museum is visited by 16 visitors a day.

This income, he said, was not sufficient to cover operational costs, which explains why the museum depends on the city administration’s budget.

Radya Pustaka was built by Adipati Sosrodiningrat IV under the order of Paku Buwono (PB) X of the Kasunanan Surakarta Palace, on Oct. 28, 1890.

Unfortunately, it has made headlines for the wrong reasons, including an alleged forgery case in its historical and prehistoric collection in 1997 and a theft from its statue collection in 2007.

Another forgery case dogged the museum in 2010, on this occasion PB X’s puppet collections made, the then Surakarta mayor, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo establish an expert team tasked with testing the originality of the museum’s collections.

Chairman of the museum committee, Sunjata, said that a phase by phase rearrangement of the museum had been done on the Pura Mangkunegaran library, which included digitalizing its ancient manuscript collection.

“[In doing so] We emulate the way the Mangkunegaran museum is arranged,” Sunjata said.

He added that of the museum’s 300 ancient manuscripts, 142 had been converted into digital files. The original scripts were stored in a temperature-controlled during the process. At the same time, he said, 90 of its statues were being labeled and named.

Limited space has often forced the management to leave the collections outside a room in the museum. This has often forced them to postpone the handing over of collections including the 44 statues belonging to batik figure Go Tik Swan, a recipient of Bintang Budaya Parama Dharma award given by the government for his service for developing Indonesian batik.

“Go Tik Swan offered to display his collection of statues here to make them more accessible but they are still at Go’s house waiting to be collected,” Suwarno, one of the heirs, said.

Widdy said the municipal administration would maintain its supervision of Radya Pustaka, as stipulated in a mayoral decree. The decree said the museum committee managed the museum professionally and it would be supported financially by the city budget.