New face of Indonesia's only geological museum

New face of Indonesia's only geological museum

By Yuli Tri Suwarni

BANDUNG (JP): If you are fond of visiting museums, does the
Bandung Museum of Geology ring a bell? Over the years, there has
been no news about this museum, a legacy of the Dutch colonial
rule.

Museums remains unpopular. But there are still a few people
concerned about this museum, located on Jl. Purnawarman.

Built in 1929, the museum has had its interior renovated.
After renovations lasting 18 months, it was reopened on Aug. 22
by Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

The museum is the only one in the country and has the largest
collection of Indonesian geological features.

To people who visited the museum before the renovations, they
must find it difficult to recognize the interior because it was
totally renovated.

Eight geologists from the Center for Geological Research and
Development have turned it into an area where a series of
journeys into the history of the earth will never bore you.

The first thing that they did was to expand the exhibition
room from one floor to two. Head of the center Bambang Dwiyanto
said that before the renovation the exhibition room measured only
1,600 square meters but that now it was about 6,000 square
meters.

The interior has been renovated without changing the unique
art deco style of the building. A society concerned with the
preservation of historical buildings in Bandung, Bandung
Heritage, has recommended that museum be designated an historical
building, reflecting the unique features of the city.

"As for the exterior, we have only had it repainted to make it
look neat. We did not dare to change the shape of the building
because art deco buildings are protected," he said.

Rocks and fossils

Prior to the renovation, the center neglected the beauty of
rocks and a number of fossils, regarding them as simply heaps of
inanimate objects deserving a place in old cabinets, also a
legacy of the Dutch. Besides, a lack of qualified museum guides
also made visitors struggle to guess whether what they saw was a
piece of rock or a fossil.

Today, however, about 1,000 kinds of fossils and rocks in the
collection of the museum, representing the natural and mineral
potential of all the regions across Indonesia, are neatly
arranged. Bambang even went as far as guaranteeing that with the
help of written information, these objects could speak about
their origin and development. Audiovisual materials are also
available to enable visitors to have an interactive "dialog" with
the objects exhibited.

"I guarantee that even in the absence of a guide, as long as a
visitor can see and read, he will get complete information about
the objects exhibited," he told reporters in Bandung late last
week.

Until the 1970s, the museum's collection, dating back to the
Dutch colonial times, followed by the brief Japanese occupational
period, was made up of some 250 kinds of rocks and fossils.
Between 1970 and 1980, the collection was enlarged to encompass
some 1,000 kinds of rocks and fossils. By then, the museum had
served as a center for geological historical research in
Indonesia.

Now, the information about Indonesia's geological features is
sufficiently available either in Indonesian or English. The
museum, now up to international standards, has often been made a
destination of foreign tourists, particularly geologists from all
over the world.

Origin of the Earth

Stories covering the origin of the Earth and the use of
geology to mankind are divided into three large themes, each of
which occupies a separate area. The west part of the lower floor
illustrates the geological condition and potential of Indonesia's
nature and is made up of 11 compartments.

The story about the origin of the Earth begins with the
Nebulae hypothesis, about how the Earth came to be created some
4.5 billion years ago. Here, you can see heavenly bodies such as
a meteor entering the earth's atmosphere. This section is also
home to a collection of lithic meteors.

There is also geological history and phenomena in six major
islands in Indonesia: Sumatra, Java, Nusa Tenggara, Kalimantan,
Sulawesi and the Banda Sea up to Irian Jaya. In one of the
compartments on the ground floor, the Volcano Room, you can also
clearly see a map on the potential of most of Indonesian's
volcanoes, of which 129 stretch from Sumatra, Java, Nusa
Tenggara, Banda Island up to North Sumatra. In addition, it also
clearly shows you potential earthquakes caused by the activities
of the Indo-Australian and Pacific Ocean faults.

In the eastern part of the ground floor of the museum, the
theme of the history of life assumes dominance. Systematically
displayed here is a collection of objects relating to the history
of life spanning from about 3 billion years ago to the present.

Panels there present the early formation of rocks, the
emergence of early signs of life, the development of marine life
and the environment of the Earth. One of the replicas of a rare
animal in the museum's collection is a reptile from prehistoric
times, Tyrannosaurus rex, which existed some 96 million to 210
million years ago and became extinct along with other kinds of
dinosaurs about 65 million to 97 million years ago.

"We also display a collection of the legs and eggs of
dinosaurs here," Bambang added.

In the History of Life Room, there is a display of a neatly
arranged collection of prehistoric human fossils from Indonesia
and other countries. Also on display here are artifacts from a
number of regions in Indonesia, such as finds from the layer
forming Bandung Lake, such as a collection of fossilized snakes
that once lived there.

On the second floor, visitors will see the adverse and
favorable effects of making use of geology in the interest of
human life. It presents a map showing the mineral riches that
most Indonesians are not aware of.

Unfortunately, the museum does not give detailed information
about the quantities of the exports of Indonesia's natural
wealth, the proceeds of which usually go into the coffers of
international mining companies instead of being used for the
promotion of the community's welfare.

Another regret is that this room does not display a map of
environmental pollution due to the waste of mining activities, a
case which is spotlighted only inconsistently in domestic mass
media.

Bambang declined to mention how much money had been spent on
the renovation of the building where the Dutch colonial
administration used to keep the results of geological and mining
surveys.

"Enough. But not so much that we possesses a fairly complete
collection. The collection needs to be cleaned and
reconstructed," he noted.

This museum also has its own library, a laboratory and
equipment for workshops on conservation. This equipment includes,
among other things, water blasters to clean fossils and an X-ray
machine to determine if fossils are genuine. Thanks to all this,
Bambang said, the museum had achieved international standards.

"There is hardly a geological museum in Southeast Asia with
separate units like ours. Therefore, this museum has the
potential to lure tourists with an interest in geological
matters," he said.

To help domestic students, the center applies methods to
enable students understand what they see. Usually, he said, the
students were given a questionnaire which must be completed using
the names of objects found in the museum. After the visit is
over, the questionnaires are collected and checked by museum
officials and later given to the teaching assistants.

Before its closure for renovations in November 1998, the
museum was visited by a large number of people. During the course
of 1997, for example, some 140,000 people visited the museum,
free of charge.

It is a pity, though, that very soon, visitors will have to
pay for a ticket to enter this museum, at the request of the
center.