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.