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City prepares new collection to revive Maritime Museum in 2020 after fire
Following a fire that destroyed about half of the collection of the Maritime Museum in North Jakarta in January, the number of visitors declined over the year. Fortunately, the city administration has planned to revive its collection in 2020.
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Working hard: Several construction workers are preparing to erect the roof of sections A and C of the Maritime Museum in Jakarta’s Kota Tua on Nov. 9. Reconstruction work at the museum is expected to be completed by the end of 2019. Both sections were razed by fire on Jan. 16, 2018. (JP/Galih Gumelar)
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group of enthusiastic tourists visited the Maritime Museum on Jl. Pasarikan, North Jakarta, recently to learn about the grand history of Indonesia’s maritime activities. However, their faces suddenly turned sour as they went into the first exhibition room.
Rizky, a 24-year-old college student from Sukabumi, West Java, said he could not really understand the main purpose of the museum as the collection was incomplete and that it lacked explanatory signs, as if the museum personnel did not care much about them.
Another visitor, Doddy Akbar, a 39-year-old father from Bogor, West Java, who visited with his two children, said he also felt the same way.
“This museum is probably good enough according to Indonesian standards, but it needs more improvement to be a world-class museum,” Doddy told The Jakarta Post.
The Maritime Museum was initially home to 130 artifacts that showed the importance of nautical activities throughout Indonesia’s history. However, a major blaze that engulfed sections A and C of the building on Jan. 16, 2018, destroyed approximately half of the collection.
To return the museum to its original format, its committee planned to create miniatures of all the destroyed artifacts and install them in the new building next year.
The Maritime Museum’s head of technical management, Husnison Nizar, said it had to remake the destroyed artifacts to complete its storyline, so that visitors could understand the purpose of the museum.
