The Museum in Malaysia: An interpretation

The Museum in Malaysia: An interpretation Shamsul A.B.* * Shamsul A.B.BA,MA (Malaya), PhD(Monash) is Distinguished Professor of Social Anthropology and currently Founding Director, Institute of Ethnic Studies (KITA), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). He researches, lectures and writes extensively on ‘politics, culture and economic development’ in the Malay-speaking world, with an empirical focus on Indonesia and Malaysia. Local and international media often consult him on matters relating to historiography and current affairs of the region. His book From British to Bumiputera Rule (1986), in the opinion of Professor Wang Gungwu, is “something of a classic and...a seminal study of a critical stage in Malay history.” He has also been instrumental in the re-conceptualizing and rebranding of Pahang State Museum – ‘Pahang 1874’. In pre-colonial Malay world the concept and institution called museum did not exist. It was introduced into the region by its European conquerors in the 19th century, expanded in the 20th century and enlarged in scope and breadth with the advent of the 21st century when ‘heritage’ became the buzzword after UNESCO tagged some historical sites, in Malaysia for instance, as UNESCO’s world heritage sites. For a conceptual elaboration and framework on the Malay world and its civilization, see, Shamsul Amri Baharuddin (2009) ‘Alam Melayu: Mengkonsepsi Sejarah dan Kebudayaan Peradabannya melalui Projek ESKM,’ Ucaptama Kolokium Ensiklopedia Sejarah dan Kebudayaan Melayu, 24 Februari, Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka, Kuala Lumpur. In the predominantly illiterate pre-European Malay world the center of civilization was the royal palace, or istana, surrounded in its vicinity by the largely elite community that provided legitimacy and support. Malay civilization by definition and by default was istanasentrik (palace-centric). At the apex of the centre is the raja (a Sanskrit word for ‘king’), who was dependent on his bangsawan (aristocratic) families, religious scholars and scribes, who, in turn, would not have survived without their entourage of entertainers, artisans, servants and slaves. Milner, A.C. (1982), Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule, Published for the American Association of Asian Studies by Arizona University Press, 1982 (Thai translation, 2008);Milner, A.C. (2008), The Malays, Oxford: Blackwell It is in the istana that the hikayat, or classical text, was penned by scholars and scribes about the life, entertainment, genealogy, family intrigues, customs, cures for illness and a host of other activities observed by the royal family and aristocrats. They were hand written and copied and recopied by the scribes in the Arabic script called jawi, both the custodian and vehicle for everything to do with the Malays -- language, culture, polity, economy and the like. See, on the importance of jawi in Malay language and intellectual development, see, the excellent reference work of Asmah Haji Omar (2008), Ensiklopedia Bahasa Melayu, Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa & Pustaka. A hikayat could be described as a Malay classical ethnography, written in Jawi that narrates the minute details of social life in the istana. Overall, one could argue that, in terms of breadth and depth plus the drama, hikayat is much superior to that of any anthropological monographs written to date, on communities in the Malay world, be it written by Raymond Firth, Clifford Geertz, Stanley Tambiah or even Koenjtaraningrat. The Professorial Inaugural Lecture of Ding Choo Ming, to date, is the best sociological analysis on the origin, nature and value of the content of Malay hikayats and provides an interesting critique of the jaundiced orientalistic European-colonial opinion regarding hikayat which was simply perceived as mythologies (dongengan), see, Ding Choo Ming (2008), Manuskrip Melayu: Sumber Maklumat Peribumi Melayu, Syarahan Perdana, Bangi: Penerbit UKM. Distanced and illiterate were the rakyat (originally an Arabic word ra’a or ra’iyat meaning to pasture or subjects). Yule, H. and Burnell, A.C. (2008) The Concise Hobson-Jobson: The Anglo-Indian Dictionary, London: Wordsworth Edition (orig. 1886). They survived on news or narratives imparted by travelling story-tellers, such as Mir Hassan and Pawang Ana, which subsequently was repeated in many versions by parents to their children and by grandmothers to their grandchildren, and later passed on from generation to generation. It must be noted that these were not ‘bedtime stories’ in the European genre. They were told publicly in an open space or in a house with the audience listening tentatively or as part of entertainment of the day. Story-telling activities was said to be one the highlights of the rakyat’s public life. The western notion of museum, in its original and pre-modern form was the private collection of the rich individuals or families of ‘curious and exotic’ objects for a circle of close friends to see, discussed and analysed regarding the ‘primitive people without history’. The late Professor Eric Wolf, a well-known American anthropologist has debated at length the fallacy that ‘primitive people’ because they can’t read and write and therefore not able to produce or live without history, see, Wolf, E. R. (1982), Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley: University of California Press. These items would have been collected by sailors, proselytizers, adventurers on their trips to the lands of the savaged, barbaric and primitive peoples outside Europe funded by wealthy Europeans. Both the collectors and the audience were not only literate but also culturally, economically and politically literate, too. They were informed and cultured wealthy audience. When the French Revolution was unfolding the first ‘public museum’ was established in Paris, namely, the Louvre Museum, in 1793. The concept caught on in Great Britain and the United States in the early 19th century. However, it was only accessible to the middle and upper classes. It was during the Victorian era (1837-1901) that the British Museum was opened to the working class. Thus began the era of modern (read public) museum in Europe which was a public institution that stored a collection of artifacts and objects of scientific, artistic and historical in significance, some temporarily exhibited but mostly permanent. The public viewing was based on ‘you-can-see-but-don’t-touch’ principle. It also played the role of a research institution publishing catalogues, papers, books and magazines for public distribution. Therefore, museum was not only an exhibition centre of ‘weird non-European stuff’ but also a place where deeper examination of the objects and the cultural contexts of their presence and use were done. It is relevant to note here that the publications were in roman alphabets, be it in English, French or German, not in jawi or in any form of Arabic script, namely, Urdu or Persian, The modern European museum was not only for the literate, rich and poor, but also for serious researchers as well as hobby enthusiasts on matter relating to antiquity of European and non-European ones. Museum thus played the simultaneous role of educating, entertaining, discovering and disseminating new knowledge. There is no record whatsoever, either in jawi or romanised Malay that such a institution, private or public, called ‘museum’, did exist in pre-European or pre-colonial Malay world. Roxas-Lim, Aurora, (2005), Southeast Asian Art and Culture: Ideas, Forms and Societies, Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat; Kerlogue, F. (2004) Performing objects: museums, material culture and performance in Southeast Asia, London: The Horniman Museum; Lenzi, I. (2004), Museums of Southeast Asia, Singapore & Kuala Lumpur: Didier Millet. Perhaps, the illiterate rakyat would have been interested to at least see these objects if explained, described and narrated to them by someone literate. Even the istanasentrik elite and literate royal entourage would have enjoyed it too, but it would have been mentioned in the hikayat and indeed it would have been a major social spectacle, if it were to exist with all the tags on the objects written in jawi, of course. This implied that in the pre-European Malay world, the jawi-based intellectual and scholarly tradition of the istanasentrik kind co-existed with, or rather complemented by, the orality-based rakyat’s tradition. This duality in the tradition (literate jawi-based text vs. illiterate orality-based narratives) made it rather difficult for both to share and enjoy the same activity or institution, even if a museum were to exist. See, the intellectually penetrating work of the late Amin Sweeney (1987), A Full Hearing: Orality and Literacy in the Malay World, Berkeley: University of California Press. Such duality may not have existed in the era of pre-modern museums of Europe because the European civilization as a whole enjoyed some form of convergence owing to its roman alphabet-based and the expansion of print capitalism. As such everyone that could read and write, including the literate among the working class, would have partake and perhaps enjoy the presence of the museum. How do museum, a European invention, tradition and institution, arrive and became embedded in the social-cultural milieu of the Malay world and eventually in the colonial and post-colonial Malaysian state? The idea of modern museum in Europe, or its epistemology, is anchored in the thinking that underpinned the birth and flourishing of the Enlightenment, or the ‘Age of Reason’, when the power of reason became the driving force to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual exchange and opposed intolerances and abuses both in the church and the state. For a comprehensive history and its social context on the birth and expansion European modern museums, see, Bennett, T. (1995), The Birth of the Museum, London: Routledge; Bennett, T. (2004), Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism. London: Routledge; Corsane, G. (ed), (2005), Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader, London: Routledge; Mackenzie, J.M., (2009), Museums and Empire: Natural History, Human Cultures and Colonial Identities. Manchester: Manchester University Press. The eventual separation of the church and state, and the dominance of the latter over the former, contributed to the expansion of the ‘public sphere’ in Europe, which, in turn, provided the motivation to create a ‘nation’ as a larger, an all-compassing public sphere. Within the public sphere many new public spaces emerged as centres and agents of ‘enlightenment’ such as the learned societies, schools and universities, the book industry, libraries, zoos, and, of course, museums. It is through these institutions within the public sphere that a modern state was constructed, administered and reproduced. Simultaneously, the notion of the nation was also relevant and begun to be imagined, publicly. Both processes, the state construction and the imagination of the nation, were driven by the need to homogenise a social environment characterized by heterogeneity and pluralism. The school textbooks, the university lectures, the libraries, the galleries, the zoos, botanical gardens and, of course, the museum belonged to a ‘supply change’ that fulfilled the demands of the formation of the modern-nation state. The artificialness of the whole nation-state formation and the said supply chain of apparatuses were soon forgotten and became taken-for-granted and naturalized, as it were, in the social lives of the public. In the colonized land, such as Malaysia, through colonial knowledge, the colonial presence was made even more grand by the presence of clock towers, huge statues of ‘heroes’, decorated long and large bridges, and strategically-located museums, all found in the urban centre. Museums therefore became the public archive of colonial artifacts preserving its grandeur and pretensions, supported by colonial record archive and colonial public libraries. Shamsul Amri Baharuddin (2011), ‘Ilmu kolonial’ dalam pembentukan sejarah intelektual Malaysia: sebuah pandangan, Siri Kertas Kajian Etnik UKM Bil. 17 Januari When the colonized land became independent, the epistemological basis of the museum and its physical outlook did not change very much but the content did. The storyline changed, so did the heroes and villains. In other words, the interpretation of the historiography privileged the story of the struggle of the nationalists who fought for the independence. The story about the migrants, necessarily marginalized, sometimes misrepresented to present a larger than life story of the success of the nationalists. Renan, a famous French historian once remarked that a nationalist history not only requires a collective remembering but also a collective forgetting. See, Shamsul A.B. (2001),”A History of an Identity, an Identity of a History: The Idea and Practice of ‘Malayness’ in Malaysia Reconsidered,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32(3), p. 358. This best described the colonial and post-colonial museums, including those in Malaysia. The situation in Malaysia, which has federalism as its governance structure, gets a bit complicated because each state. or negeri, has its own muzium negeri (state museum) presenting its individual negeri-based, individual storyline. For example, Muzium Negeri Sembilan prides itself with telling the Adat Perpatih story, or a matrilineal story, and its link with Minangkabau of West Sumatra established since the 1750s. Muzium Sarawak is another good example. It is one of the oldest museums in the Southeast Asian region and well-known as a ‘research museum’ for those interested in the rich history, flora and fauna of the biodiversity rich Borneo island. Its publications, namely, Sarawak Museum Journal, and Sarawak Gazette, are indispensible references for both scientists and non-scientists. A newer research museum is in Universiti Sains Malaysia which prides itself on the archeological finding of Professor Zuraina’s, namely, the ‘Perak Man’. In spite of this, to the seemingly independent muzium negeri the concept ‘creativity and innovation’ (the present buzzwords in Malaysia), as an activity, is rather alien to the salaried bureaucrats of the museums. The situation is the same in the mother museum, or Muzium Negara. They are often without in-depth professional training due to lack of funding for training and exposure abroad. Nonetheless, they have been labeled as ‘curators.’ Besides lack of training and exposure insufficient fund has also been cited as a factor that limits the creativity and innovation of these museum bureaucrats labeled as curators. Private funding is hard to come by to employ and pay really well experienced professionals, such as those employed in the richly funded private Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur. It is against such a backdrop that makes what Muzium Pahang, as a complex of museums, has undergone and achieved in the last five years as something not only an innovative transformation but also an outstanding development, which is worthy of a special focus in this brief essay, in particular the defining role of its Director-Curator in shaping its physical articulation and knowledge-based expression. Muzium Pahang began with a bold at re-conceptualization. The museum was given a brand, which it never had before, namely, from simply ‘Muzium Pahang’ to ‘Muzium Pahang: Pahang 1874.’ The brand ‘Pahang 1874’ signifies the date when the Rulers of the Malays states, including Pahang, signed the Pangkor Treaty with the British, making them British ‘protectorates.’ It also means that the new storyline adopted by the museum emphasized a lot clearer the three-era trajectory of Pahang’s historical and socio-political development: pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial. More importantly, this framework also guided the museum’s construction of a comprehensive and massive inventory list of artifacts in its holding, some for permanent exhibition and others for short-period special exhibitions. Whatever is absent from the list, hence creating gaps in the historical-cum-exhibition presentation, has been able to be replaced with artifacts on short-term loans from other museums or local collectors or with digitized representation of the artifacts on video screens. ‘Pahang 1874’ is an apt choice as the date 1874 is known to most Malaysians, particularly to primary and secondary school children who would have learnt the events relating to this date in their history lessons. Synchronizing the story line of the museum with that what is found in Malaysian history books was the first step the museum took to integrate itself directly not only with the general public but also into the education system, hence with the school children who remain the loyal majority audience of Muzium Pahang for many years. It is not a surprise to see children and adults, in Pahang and elsewhere in Malaysia or abroad donning T-shirts with ‘Pahang 1874’ printed boldly on the chest. It must also be mentioned that through the initiative of its present Director-Curator, Mr. Ahmad Farid Abd Jalal, and with the generous support of its Board of Director, Muzium Pahang has successfully approached the Pahang Royal family, a few well-known individuals in the Malaysian fashion and arts world, such as Bernard Chandran and Ramli Ibrahim, and a few entrepreneurs from the private sector, to actively participate in a number of its major projects putting the museum not only on the Malaysian map but also on the global one, which, to the best of my knowledge, no other negeri museum in Malaysia is actively pursuing. The major coup that the Director-Curator achieved thus far has been his huge success in obtaining almost single-handedly funding from the top management of ECER (Eastern Corridor Economic Region) to the tune of nearly Malaysian Ringgit 20 million to finance the transformation of the museum physically within the re-conceptualization framework it has adopted. The old buildings within the Pekan Museum complex are now under renovation and a few new buildings are already built. The whole process of the construction of the new look Muzium Pahang at Pekan complex should be completed by 2012. A Japanese architect has been employed as technical advisor and overseers the physical reconstruction of the museum. The success of the Director-Curator does not only demonstrate his creativity and innovation (by the way, the museum has no special section designated specifically for ‘innovation’) but also his huge initiative, incredible energy and appetite for hard work, and most importantly his solid networking, locally and internationally, which bore impressive outcomes and products. Now that the defunct old royal mosque in the vicinity of the Pekan Royal Palace has come under the museum’s wing, it is now possible for the museum to create the proposed ‘intellectual garden’ in which the intellectual, the religious and historical elements could be integrated to allow an important inter-religious dialogue of a kind to be held regularly in Malaysia as well as other forms dialogue and negotiations among Malaysians and between Malaysians and non-Malaysians. What is the future for “Muzium Pahang: Pahang 1874”? The traditional European museum concept, which has been adopted in the Malaysian context, constitutes essentially a combination of building, collections, general and expert staff and public visitors. This is what Muzium Pahang has been since it was first established in 1970. However, since 2006, the present Director-Curator has initiated changes that are actively taking place, including the proposed ‘intellectual garden’, that seems, conceptually, moving closer to the French concept of ‘ecomuseum’ which combines territory, heritage, memory and population. For definitions of ‘ecomuseum’ and ‘ecomuseology’ see, P. Boylan, (1992), ‘Ecomuseums and the new museology: Some definitions,’ Museums Journal, 92(4), p. 29. With the possible inclusion of the National Park in the northern part of Pahang within the complex of Pahang’s heritage and museum in the near future, Pahang may be the first state to adopt and practice fully ‘ecomuseology.’ It needs not only funding and smart administrative decision but also political-cultural will. Author’s Note: This is a draft chapter, completed in August 2012, for a proposed book on ‘The Curators’ to be published by Muzium Sultan Abu Bakar, Pekan, Pahang. PAGE 1