Learning from the past: Three girls get a glimpse of the crafts made by their ancestors.

Indonesians visit museums just twice in their lives — once as schoolchildren and then again as grandparents. That is according to a survey of Indonesian museum attendance rates, says West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) museum director Joko Prayitno.

“We don’t see museums as places to learn, to research or of interest. The majority of museum visitors are school students. Museum directors across the country are looking at ways to change this,” says Joko of the cultural and historical storehouses that represent almost every ethnic and cultural group in Indonesian provinces from Aceh to Papua.

Indonesia’s museum directors met together recently in Sumatra to discuss methods of increasing museum attendance.

During the meeting, the directors agreed that they needed to reinvent how the nation’s museums present themselves to the public, Joko says.

“We had a clear indication of what people wanted back in 2000. We hosted the hominids exhibition and within a week had 40,000 visitors. That number was far beyond anything we could ever have imagined. It was an attendance record that has never been broken since. Buses full of people arrived from places as far away as Sumbawa. This was unheard of. Our average number of visitors is normally 1,000 per month, so we were really shocked.

“Once the exhibition closed, we were scratching out heads trying to understand what had caused the phenomenon and we did some research into the visitor numbers. We discovered there had been a rumor that we had an exhibit of a snake’s head on a man’s body.

“The chief of police even came and asked if it was true we had the hominid exhibition. I said yes, but there was certainly no snake’s head.

“We discovered that mini bus drivers across the NTB were spreading the snake-head rumor to passengers. People were coming in droves to see a curiosity. That gave us a clue on attendance in museums — Indonesians like seeing something unusual or strange,” Joko says.

Using this lesson for future exhibitions could be a valuable way to increase museum attendance. However, Joko noted that such promotions should be “positive and educational because without this there would be no benefit”.

Indonesia has a very short history of museums, and a museum-visiting culture has yet to develop.
Joko says the redesign of museums is essential if interest in museums and all they have to offer is to improve.

Museums, such as the Mataram Museum Joko heads, are often extremely good value, Joko says. “It costs Rp 1,000 to visit the museum here. That is cheaper than the public toilets in Mataram — they are Rp 2,000. Here visitors can see the museum and use the toilet,” he quips wryly.

“But, in all seriousness, I feel that is one of the problems we have – museums are extremely undervalued by the public and that is reflected in the entry price,” he says.

During research trips to Singapore, Joko feels “jealous lining up to pay S$26” to enter the Singapore museum.

“There are always queues to enter. That is such a different experience and one we want to see happening here.

“At Rp 1,000, people still don’t come [to our museum]. So the problem is not the ticket price, but that visiting museums is not part of the culture here,” he says, adding that museums are relatively new in Indonesia, with these houses of history beginning in the 1980s a good century or more later than in many other nations.

“Provinces across Indonesia started building museums in 1980 with support from the culture ministry. Our curatorial standards for the museums were based on the International Convention of Museums, ICOM, with supervision from Professor Vanwengen from the Lader Museum in Holland.

“By 1982 we had developed traveling exhibitions and had outreach programs taking exhibitions to villages across the country. But still, there has only been three decades of building a social museum culture. This is relatively new,” Joko says.

The public still needs to “recognize the importance of museums in history, culture and existing society,” he says.  Creating an intrigue and enjoyment of museums is one way to increase visitor attendance and create a museum going culture, he says.

“We need to reorient the collections to the public. In the past, museums focused their attention on the collections. Now we need to orient the collections toward the public.

“We need to think about what children do and how they play, so we need to add more play experience into museum interpretations so kids get excited and ask to go museums for outings.” To achieve this, Joko says more activities need to be introduced, including IT and other interpretive material that appeals to young people.

“We need to think about what hobbies kids have and integrate these into museum experiences. We also need to recognize different interests across demographics and make exhibits appeal on more personal levels, to have stories with exhibits so they are not static.

“Young people like to be active and engaged, older people prefer to read information and have a quieter museum experience. I would also like to see cafes in museums where people come together and continue their museum experience,” says Joko of some of the methods being examined to increase visitor numbers in museums nationwide.

However, developing infrastructure and funding this specialist field of interpretive design and construction does not come cheap.

“We must work with the local government here in NTB – the government owns the museum and future planning and development of the museum is dependent on government. We hope to see funding become available in the 2010 budget, but that must still come though the [provincial economic] system,” Joko says.

Joko points out that many museum collections and their interpretations were created in the 1980s and were now “out of date”.

“Things are totally different in 2009. We need to see more temporary exhibitions so people feel
the urge to come along. When exhibits are on permanent display, people think ‘I’ll go next week and next week never comes’,” says Joko of the need to bring the nation’s museums into line with a changing Indonesia, to ensure the country’s culture and history do not get lost along the way.

— Photos by J.B. Djwan

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