National Gallery needs private sector involvement

National Gallery needs private sector involvement

By Amir Sidharta

JAKARTA (JP): In Mungkid, Central Java, the Museum Widayat stands as the bastion of Widayat's art world and his circle of influence. In Yogyakarta, everyone knows of the unique Museum Affandi, which certainly reflects the character of this Indonesian art maestro.

In Bali, apart from the Puri Lukisan, there are a number of other museums: Museum Neka, the Agung Rai Museum of Art, Museum Rudana, all around Ubud, as well as Nyoman Gunarsa's museum in Klungkung. The late Antonio Blanco was preparing for the opening of his museum when he passed away last December.

In Bandung, there is the Museum Barli and the Selasar Sunaryo. The museums that have been mentioned above are only a part of the private museums that exist in Indonesia today.

At the Indonesian Museum Congress in Sanur, Bali, last year, someone made a defensive argument that the amount of private museums that kept sprouting up indicated that the founders did not perceive museums to have a negative image, in response to my statement that museums generally had a negative image. True, the idea of museums may not have a negative image, but most museums in Indonesia, especially those state-owned and state-operated ones, certainly have a stigma attached to them. They are mostly perceived as dusty, old, static and unexciting repositories of history and culture.

The negative image of museums in Indonesia is reflected in the visible " onstage" element and the unseen "backstage" one. On the "onstage" side museums generally do not have regularly changing exhibitions and public programs that would make them more dynamic. "Back stage", most museums in Indonesia have minimal, if not dismal, storage facilities, certainly not adequate for the storage of the nation's cultural patrimony. The poor state of the storage facilities was one of the inspirations for the theft of over 20 paintings from the National Museum in 1996.

Negative image

It is due to this negative image that artists have been hesitant in giving or loaning their works to state-owned and state-operated museums. Rather than offering their works of art to state museums, they would rather open their own museums. This is the reason that Indonesia has so many private museums, most of which were established by artists, while state museums have been left neglected.

The National Gallery is a classic case in point. The institution has a very strong collection of early Indonesian art, particularly dating from the 1950s and 1960s, due to the hard work of art critic Kusnadi, who carefully selected the paintings that now appear in the collection for the directorate of arts at the former ministry of education and culture. In the 1980s, the concept of the Wisma Seni Nasional (National Gallery) was initiated, with the idea of combining the collections of the directorate of arts and other collections under the ministry of education and culture. However, when the Indonesian art boom happened at the end of the 1980s, the government failed to anticipate the development of the art industry, and paid little attention to collecting efforts.

As a result, the best paintings that appeared on the market, in art galleries as well as Christie's and Sotheby's auctions, fell into the hands of private collectors. The National Museum project relied heavily on donations from the artists themselves.

The National Gallery project began to materialize with the organization of exhibitions in the late 1980s. In preparation for the 1995 art exhibition of the Non-Aligned Movement, the building that now houses the institution was restored. Since then, although not yet formally inaugurated, the institution has became an important venue for Indonesian art programs. It had a curatorial board consisting of a number of artists and critics, with the task of selecting proposals for art exhibitions submitted by mainly by artists.

Finally, in 1999, the National Gallery was formally inaugurated. Education and culture ministry staff were appointed to operate the institution. Curators coming from other academic institutions were selected into a curatorial team. Their task was basically a continuation of the former curatorial board's task.

The curators do not conduct research and develop exhibition projects, instead they select and determine which submitted exhibition project meet the artistic criteria of the National Gallery. As a result, the exhibitions that are shown at the National Gallery are seldom outstanding; most are merely acceptable as they meet the institution's curatorial criteria.

However, these exhibitions never manage to bring forth the gallery's vision, as they are usually prepared by exhibition organizers with no direct ties nor relationship to the institution.

Possessing large and growing collections of prominent artists, many collectors have toyed with the idea of opening their own private museums. However, opening a museum does not only involve quite large amounts of money, it also requires qualified professional human resources, which are still scarce in this country.

One possible solution that might work, especially with President Abdurrahman Wahid's bold idea of trimming the nation's overweight bureaucracy, is for a private-public partnership to take over the National Gallery's operations.

The concept is for the National Gallery to open itself to private sector involvement. Public collectors would be invited to loan their art collections to the National Gallery and provide annual contributions that would cover the costs of maintenance and the development of public programs.

In return for a certain amount of funds, they would be given the position of trustee with the power to determine the direction of the gallery and to vote for that director that seemed most qualified to run the institution.

Curators

The director would then select curators based on their qualifications and expertise, to be employed full-time by the museum on a tenure-track basis, much like in the academic world. The curators would continue to work for the museum even though there may be a change in directorship. They should be specialists in fields of Indonesian art, categorized by chronological periods or regional division.

So, there may be curators for nineteenth century Indonesian art, for the Mooi Indie era (ca. 1900-1942), early modern Indonesian art (1937 - 1965), art during the New Order (1966- 1999) and Contemporary Art (1974 - now). Or curators for Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Bali, and Western Indonesia (Sumatra and Kalimantan) , Eastern Indonesia (Sulawesi, Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, and Irian Jaya) for the regional categories.

The curators would mainly conduct research that would culminate in an exhibition and the publication of a catalog. The exhibitions that they prepare would be scheduled in the gallery's program.

Based on the curator's exhibition preparations, the director would then set a five-year program for the National Gallery, along with an appropriate budget to be approved by the Board of Trustees. When necessary, the director would try to find additional funds from corporations and individual philanthropists.

The curators would work with the collections manager and conservator to select the most appropriate work for their exhibition and make sure the work was ready for display. If a certain work of art that they would like to include in the show is in the hands of a collector, they would ask the museum director to approach the collector and try to get the piece for the exhibition.

The exhibition designer would work closely with the curator to design a spatial layout and graphic design that would be most conducive to the communication of the curatorial message of the show. The education department would prepare public programs and educational material that would make visits to the gallery more exciting, entertaining, as well as educational.

The marketing, promotion and communication divisions of the museum would work to ensure that there was adequate publicity about the museum's programs, whether it be in the form of print, radio, or television advertisements, or news, reviews and critiques in the mass media, so that museum visitation rates will be high.

Under this new system, curators would no longer merely determine whether or not an exhibition prepared by an exhibition organizer or by an artist was suitable for representation at the institution, but actively conduct research to produce their own show. This would ensure that the exhibitions held at the National Gallery reflect the institution's vision and character.

Professionalism

The new system would also mean that the level of professionalism of the institution be maintained at a high standard. The scarce pool of professionals knowledgeable in the art field would not have to be drained by the private museums, but could be concentrated toward a national effort. Instead of spending excessive amounts of funds to finance their own private museums, private collectors could contribute a lower amount of funds to ensure the accomplishment of a greater effort at the National Gallery.

Most importantly, with this new system Indonesia would be able to present a very strong and comprehensive collection in a single location, something that private collectors will never be able to accomplish, because their collecting efforts are always limited by their personal tastes.

The new system would ensure that the National Gallery was provided with, albeit on loan, the creme de la creme of Indonesian art works. Therefore, instead of having numerous mediocre private museums, we would have at least one strong National Museum, and be better off for it.

This is not, however, meant to say that the private museums that already exist today should be abandoned altogether. Each private museum has its own character, and would still contribute greatly to the diversity of Indonesian arts. However, we have to be aware that the National Gallery is certainly in need of a national effort on its behalf.

Now, the question is whether the government would welcome such a drastic change in the management of one of its most precious institutions? Will they allow private involvement in the institution which they tend to guard so protectively? If, for some miraculous reason, the government suddenly becomes open to this possibility, then it will still take quite an effort to convince the private collectors and as well as individual artists to support this new system. We should remain optimistic, however, that it can work.