The Indonesian government has received an offer for the return of around 14,000 historical objects from the Nusantara (Archipelago) Museum in Delft, the Netherlands.

'€œI received the [offer] letter this week,'€ the Culture and Elementary and Secondary Education Ministry'€™s director general of culture, Kacung Marijan, said on Sunday evening.

He was speaking to journalists after he opened a workshop on the management of cultural heritage in Yogyakarta.

Kacung said that based on information he received, the Nusantara Museum in Delft intended to return its collections to Indonesia due to financial difficulties it was currently facing.

The 100-year-old museum is the only museum in the Netherlands dedicated specificially to art and cultural objects from Indonesia, a former Dutch colony. A shadow puppet master from Yogyakarta, Ki Lejar Soebroto, has often been invited to perform at the museum.

Kacung said that next month, the government would send an expert team to the Netherlands to further investigate the historical objects and examine on how to bring them back to Indonesia. The expert said he did not yet have more detailed information on what the historical object collections consisted of and how old they were.

'€œI'€™ve heard that some of the Nusantara Museum'€™s collections to be returned are made of gold and silver,'€ said Kacung. As soon as they arrived in Indonesia, he said, the historical objects would be kept in a one-hectare-square- meter historical object warehouse, which was being built at the Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII) complex in Jakarta.

'€œThe historical objects will become the collection of the National Museum, Jakarta,'€ said Kacung.

He said that during the last five years, the Indonesian government had continued to renovate museums in several areas across the country. There were around 100 museums being surveyed and mapped out in various areas, he added. '€œThese [survey and mapping results] will become our basis to improve our museums,'€ said Kacung.

Museum officials and cultural heritage experts participated in the '€œMuseum Interpretation and Audience Management of Cultural Heritage'€ workshop, which was held by UNESCO Jakarta.

Kacung said it was hoped that Indonesia could share its experience in managing cultural heritage with museum managers in Afghanistan.

UNESCO Jakarta'€™s head of social human science, Irakli Khodeli, appreciated Indonesia for its financial support of a project called '€œPromoting Intercultural Dialogue through Capacity Building Training for Museum Development at UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Indonesia and Afghanistan'€.

"The objectives of the project are to support peace reconciliation and reconstruction in Afghanistan through strengthening capacity in world heritage interpretation and museum management," Khodeli said.

He also hoped that this project would support cross cultural dialogue between Indonesia and Afghanistan through the strengthening of South-South Cooperation in the field of culture.

Khodeli said this project is the result of meeting between former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai at the Bali Democracy Forum in Bali four years ago.

"UNESCO world heritage sites such as the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan and the Borobudur temple in Indonesia are crucial for promoting intercultural dialogue from both within and between nation states," he said. (ebf)

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