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Adep

Much ado about cultural heritage doesn’t necessarily mean real, authentic interest in the subject  matter. Media hypes and an overheated public opinion  about national pride which has been hurt by foreigners, often happens to  coincide with a high level of ignorance as to one’s own country’s social-cultural history.  Now museums ought to be the temples of culture, the cold stores of the historical highlights as well as the greenhouses of blossoming modern cultural developments.  At least that is what one should hope they would be. However the number of visitors to Indonesian museums is minimal.  There are the  mandatory visits of students of course. But after graduation only very few people show up; in Jakarta (with an estimated total of  about 10 million inhabitants and even some 25 million in greater Jakarta, Jabotabek) only 10.000 non-student visits in the Fine Arts Museum, the Ceramic Museum and the Maritime Museum taken together, are registered on a yearly basis. A very poor record by any means.

There are may be many reasons for this negligence by the general  public. One them being the unattractiveness of the museums.  And failure of their public relations. Lack of appealing artifacts,  lack of tempting collections and lack of money also. Or perhaps the ex-students are just fed up with museums after the  boring experiences they had during their involuntary visits.  Whatever.

It can be done differently.  Last month I met this entrepreneurial man of history, Adep ( short for Ade Purnama).   He was last month’s guest at  Bonnie’s and Pelopor’s. We met at a “rijsttafel” – history must be fun!- and much to my own surprise last Tuesday I found myself visiting Bronbeek Museum in the company of Bonnie and him. The museum is dedicated to the history of the KNIL  – the former colonial army in Indonesia- which I always thought appalling enough to avoid going there. But for Adep it meant just another interesting site where he could gather background information on colonial phenomena after similar visits to Middelburg, Delft, Leiden, Hoorn, Enhuizen Amsterdam etc.

The colonial past has been a heavyweight determining factor of the RI. Some years ago it came to this guy’s mind that most historical and  cultural artifacts which are in one way or the other part of that history are not in but outside museums.  A lot of them suffering from poor maintenance unfortunately, by the way. But one can best draw attention to them by using a simple form of entertaining. His  brainwave can be labeled ‘plesiran tempo dulu’. In 2002 this notions resulted in Sahabat Museum – a museum community. A very peculiar museum which is also known as Batmus ( indeed Indonesians love acronyms), which is a special kind of open air museum  made up by  ‘journeys to the past’: organized day-trips for groups from one open air historical site to another open air cultural site ,while the guide provides information. Characteristically these trips have a theme, provide expertise on the subjects and imply drinks and food for the participants. While this started out in Jakarta, by the success of it Batmus also offers visits to other parts of the archipelago now, where striking remnants of the colonial past can be found. By and by Batmus has developed into a cultural travel organization.

I think Adep’s approach is for the benefit of historical and cultural awareness in Indonesia . One worthy of a lot of success.