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reviously a favorite venue for photo shoots, the old Dutch cemetery at Taman Prasasti Museum, Central Jakarta, is losing its attractiveness as many of the tombs and sculptures have been removed from the park.

The changes in the city'€™s only outdoor museum have not been for the better.

The museum is undergoing renovation that will consist of landscape restructuring and the preservation of its collection.

The city administration is expecting to finish the renovations in 2014.

'€œWe expect to finish the restructuring of the landscape this year, while the conservation of the tombstones and inscriptions will likely be completed next year,'€ said Enny Prihantini, head of the Fatahillah Museum, which also oversees the Taman Prasasti Museum.

Even though the renovation work is underway, the museum is still open to the public. However, visitors cannot walk through parts of its yard, where tree trunks lie scattered or the cement is still wet.

At the back of the museum, the statues being repaired have been covered by plastic sheeting to protect them from the ongoing construction work.

'€œFor the landscape restructuring, we have been able to achieve about 80 percent to 90 percent of the
project, but for the conservation of the collection we still need more funds,'€ Enny said.

The Jakarta administration had allocated around Rp 2.8 billion (US$256,000) for the landscape restructuring of Taman Prasasti Museum and almost Rp 1 billion to conserve thousands of artifacts in both Fatahillah and Taman Prasasti museums, she said.

Many items in the collection at the Taman Prasasti Museum need treatment because fallen trees have damaged some tombstones and statues, while time and weather have caused writing on tombstones to fade.

Some artifacts had also sustained minor damage caused by vandals who had scratched their names or graffiti on them, Enny said.

'€œStrong winds in Jakarta last year brought old trees down, damaging around 25 tombstones and statues,'€ she said.

To prevent similar damage from recurring, the museum was pruning the trees in cooperation with the Jakarta Parks and Cemetery Agency, she said.

As for the broken statues and cracked tombstones, the museums have repaired some of them. These recovered artifacts are being kept in storage until the new landscape is ready.

The old cemetery was opened in 1795 originally for the burial of Dutch people only, but from 1799 to 1975 anyone who could afford it could either buy or rent plots in the cemetery for the burial of family members.

The cemetery used to house 4,600 graves, including those of Olivia Mariamne Raffles, the wife of British governor general Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, and activist Soe Hok Gie.

All of the bodies have since been moved to the Netherlands or other public cemeteries in Jakarta, leaving only 1,242 tombstones and their inscriptions. (nai)