WEST NUSA TENGGARA STATE MUSEUM AND THE CHANGING FACE OF INDONESIAN MUSEUMS (THE JOURNAL OF THE ASIAN ARTS SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA)
2025-03-08
James Bennet | Adjunct Curator, West Nusa Tenggara State Museum.
On 21 September 2024 the renowned Sasak shadow puppeteer, Lalu nasib, presented a performance from the Serat Menak (Romance of Menak) at West Nusa Tenggara State Museum in Mataram, Lombok. The plot describes the familial conflict that arises when the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle, Raja Jayeng Rana (Amir Hamzah) resolves to abdicate and bequest his throne to his impetuous son, Maryunani. Many in the audience were conscious that the play’s theme of the transmission of knowledge and power to the next generation was particularly poignant on this occasion. Lalu nasib, now 83 and recently having suffered a stroke, is among the last remaining exponents of wayang Sasak which today only tenuously survives as a living theatre tradition.
The play commenced with the conventional scene where the punakawan, are in conversation. This ensemble of grotesque buffoons is led by Umar Maye, more familiarly known in Java as the divine fool Semar and in bali as Twalen. Lalu nasib has made their characterisation, including the dialogue replete with innuendos and double entendre, a hallmark of his performance style. In 2015, his rendition of the punakawan characters was considered so outrageous that the National Radio Broadcasting Commission banned TV broadcasts of his plays as being ‘overly spiced with sexual references’ (https:// www.kpi.go.id/).
Nevertheless, the banter between the clowns that night took an unexpectedly serious turn when one jester asked, ‘What is a museum?’ Their subsequent discussion involved witty repartee in the three languages of Sasak, Samawa, and Mbojo, spoken in West nusa Tenggara province, as well as bahasa Indonesia. Eventually, the servant-clowns concluded the definition of a museum is a place where heritage is stored for future generations and where one can study culture.
Fifty years ago in 1975, when the famous Indonesian playwright, W. S. Rendra, wrote Kisah perjuangan suku Naga (Struggle of the Naga Tribe), one of his characters disparagingly observed a museum is a place where we ‘shove the remnants of our culture in a box’ (Rendra 1979: 57). Certainly, for many decades this appears to have been just that as Indonesian state museums suffered chronic neglect through underfunding and lack of professional governance.
A succession of tragedies has decimated the country’s heritage collections over the past two decades. These include the thefts of Hindu-buddhist sculptures and gold objects from Surakarta’s Radya Pusaka Museum (2007) and Yogyakarta’s Sonobudoyo Museum (2010) as well as the catastrophic f ires at the national Maritime Museum (2018) and National Museum of Indonesia (2023) in Jakarta. A full inventory of items destroyed in the national Museum inferno is yet to be made public. However, judging from the damaged and missing objects in the recently re-opened exhibition spaces, the blaze consumed some of Indonesia’s finest historical masterpieces.
Nevertheless, positive transformation is occurring in the Indonesian museum sector since Rendra wrote his scathing assessment, though with various degrees of effectiveness in a country so geographically vast and socially diverse as Indonesia. They relate to the increasing availability of higher-level curatorial studies and cooperation between state and private museums, especially on the ‘inner islands’ of Java and bali. For Indonesia’s expanding middle class, a career in the heritage sector is now seen as a potentially appealing job opportunity.
The changes are epitomised by exciting developments at the West Nusa Tenggara State Museum in the province’s capital of Mataram, under the directorship since 2022 of Ahmad nuralam with the support of the enthusiastic staff he has gathered around him. Nuralam possesses a profound understanding of the role of a museum as a space to celebrate local cultural heritage. Unlike the popular trend elsewhere in Indonesia and overseas where art museums increasingly define their identity as entertainment, he believes that the West Nusa Tenggara Museum can best evolve as a centre for research excellence.
The collection is small, just over 7,000 objects, but is notable for its unique holdings across a range of media such as textiles, sculpture, archaeological objects and material culture. The Museum has recently commenced the digitisation of its internationally important palm-leaf manuscript collection in collaboration with the national Research and Innovation Agency (bRIn) in Jakarta. There is a well-attended regular program of public lectures, seminars and lectures.
Rather than emphasise the museum’s role as outreach (penjangkauan) or engagement (keterlibatan), terms which imply a privileged position, Nuralam has emphasised the importance of networking (jejaring) with all levels of society from village keeping places to universities and custodians of royal collections. This is especially relevant for West nusa Tenggara which is among the poorest provinces in Indonesia where government resources are stretched thinly in every direction. nuralam has furthermore not ignored the role of the institution as an egalitarian community space. He has opened the museum facilities to a wide variety of activities, ranging from weekly classes in classical literature to line-dancing.
An essential aspect of nuralam’s strategy has been the promotion of social media managed by the Museum’s dedicated team, leading to an upsurge in daily visitor numbers (Febrian 2024: 56). Social media is especially popular in Indonesia and is a prominent form of communication in the country’s museum sector which regrettably Australian peers remain unable to access due to low levels of bahasa Indonesian literacy.
Over the past 18 months, West Nusa Tenggara Museum has marked three major milestones. The first is displaying the confidence to engage in the national debate surrounding the repatriation of the Lombok Treasure from the Netherlands to the National Museum Jakarta in november 2023. In 1894, the Dutch military invaded West Lombok, sacking the Balinese palace of Ukir Kawi, translated as ‘Ornament of the Poets’, in Cakranegara. They looted 230 kilograms of gold and 7,000 kilograms of silver, as well as hundreds of priceless works of art, subsequently removed to the netherlands (Historia ID 2023: 37).
The invasion was at the invitation of indigenous Sasak chieftains, subsequently used as a pretext to forcefully annex the whole island into the colonial Dutch East Indies. Today the Indonesian narrative of this war focuses on the rapacious European looting, but this is belied by an English eyewitness account which records the Sasak allies also actively engaged in sacking the extraordinarily wealthy balinese palace.
The international repatriation of art objects from the past is never a simple process and invariably precipitates contested claims of ownership. West nusa Tenggara Museum proposed the Lombok Treasure, or part thereof, be exhibited in Mataram. The Museum complex is located just 8 km from the former site of Ukir Kawi palace which was systematically levelled by the Dutch in 1894 and is now a densely populated commercial district.
The most vocal critics of this proposal came from a sector of the local Sasak community who claimed the return of the balinese treasures would reopen old wounds between the Muslim Sasak and Hindu balinese populations. Today Sasak people still describe the people from neighbouring bali who settled in West Lombok 400 years ago as immigrants (pendatang). Babad Praya (Chronicle of Praya) recording the disastrous conflict between the Sasak and balinese in 1891-1894 continues to be a taboo text due to the sensitivity of the subject in Praya where these events occurred.
The Museum also faces a bureaucratic obstacle as it is not listed among the government designated institutions eligible to house national treasures. Part of its challenge is its lack of a dedicated permanent gallery for temporary exhibitions. The official visit to West nusa Tenggara Museum by Indonesia’s newly appointed Minister of Culture, Dr Fadli Zon, on 7 January 2025 at least reflects the seriousness with which the central government is prepared to look more closely at these challenges.
The Museum’s active contribution to the repatriation debate is the first time a small regional museum has challenged central government decisions about heritage sector management. Jakarta’s policies sometimes show little awareness of local opinion. The national Museum has unquestioningly assumed its right to be the caretaker of the Lombok Treasure although their recent new display in Jakarta includes errors in labelling which raise doubts about such assumptions. Furthermore, the catastrophic loss of collections in the National Museum and Maritime Museum conflagrations raises very real questions about appropriate duty of care.
The second milestone for the West Nusa Tenggara Museum is the invitation to be one of only three Indonesian institutions to participate in the Second Islamic Arts Al-Diriyah biennale in Saudi Arabia from January to May 2025. The other two are the Museum Sonobudoyo (Yogyakarta) and national Library (Jakarta), all selected through community consultation in Indonesia. The Biennale features historical art together with works by contemporary Muslim artists to an extent not usually seen at such international events. The three Indonesian institutions are exhibiting alongside around 35 others including the Louvre (Paris), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Museum of Islamic Art (Doha), al-Sabah Collection (Kuwait) and Calouste Gulbenkian Museum (Lisbon). The spectacular venues are specially designed pavilions located at King Abdulaziz International Airport, Jeddah.
The Museum’s participation in the Biennale is especially significant due to a long history of Indonesian Islamic art being ignored, or only receiving tokenistic representation, in international exhibitions despite the country having the world’s largest Muslim population. Indonesian participation brings a greater diversity than is usually seen in Islamic art exhibitions, such as the Central Javanese shadow puppets depicting the nine pioneer saints of Islam in Java (wayang sadat).
West Nusa Tenggara’s geographical location situated between Hindu bali and the eastern islands with their indigenous Austronesian and Christian spiritual traditions is uniquely documented in the eight works of art from Lombok and Sumbawa selected for Jeddah. The Museum display features a variety of media, including an illustrated manuscript, woven textiles and precious metalwork. There is a luxurious betelnut set featuring an inscription recording the name of a 19th century owner who was a balinese brahman woman and a lavishly embroidered woman’s headcover decorated with talismanic Islamic imagery.
The third milestone for West Nusa Tenggara Museum is the recent gift by the Australian collector, Michael Abbott AO KC, of a set of illuminated leaves from an Indian Qur’an, dated c.1700, to the Museum. To the writer’s knowledge, this is the first occasion that a private Australian art collector has generously gifted art to an Indonesian public museum. Moreover, Abbott has proposed further donations of Sasak textiles to augment the Museum’s collection. The gift of the Qur’an is particularly meaningful as Lombok inhabitants are renowned for their religious piety: hence Lombok is called the ‘Island of One Thousand Mosques’. The first public display of the Abbott gift was in the Museum’s exhibition Khazanah Ramadan (Treasures of Ramadan) held at Al-Muttaqin Grand Mosque in Mataram to celebrate the conclusion of the Holy Fasting Month in March 2024.
Abbott’s donation is inspired by nuralam and his staff’s remarkable work promoting the institution and its collections. The Museum’s policy to engage international partners is exemplified by my own involvement over the last two years as the first Australian Asian art curator embedded in an Indonesia public institution on a long-term basis. The Abbott gift also reflects my 30-year professional collaboration with this well-known Australian collector, including as co-editor for his 2023 publication Interwoven journeys: Michael Abbott collections of Asian art.
The readiness of the Museum to engage in the national debate surrounding the most appropriate venue for the Lombok Treasure and the Saudi Arabian invitation to participate in the Second Islamic Arts Biennale 2025 is testimony to the Museum’s achievements and the organisation’s professional confidence which is inspiring positive changes in the museum sector elsewhere in the country. It also reflects the growing professionalism of the new generation of cultural workers in Indonesia who are engaged and focused on developing heritage management skills. These changes do not transpire in a vacuum as similar shifts are taking place in the educational, community development and environmental sectors in Indonesia. They are evidence of the rapid societal transformations occurring in the country on our doorstep about which few Australians are aware. (TAASA The Journal of the Asian Arts Society of Australia Vol. 34 No 1 March 2023)
James bennett is Adjunct Curator, West Nusa Tenggara State Museum; Emeritus Curator of Southeast Asian Art and Material Culture, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory; and Al-Madar Guest Expert for Saudi Arabia 2025 International biennale of Islamic Art.
