Challenging times for houses of history

Visitors viewing one of the exhibits at the National Museum. In reality, museums are competing against theme parks and entertainment outlets for visitors. — Photos: GRACE CHEN and SAMUEL ONG/The Star

IT IS educational; a way of providing an interactive bridge to the past; a significant tourist attraction.

These are some of the ways the public define museums.

But visitors feel public museums are currently not fulfilling their roles.

And the people have a long complaint list to voice out dissatisfactions.

At the National Textile Museum for example, many of the exhibits were void of textual explanations.

One of the exhibits at the Textile Museum.

In one section, displays were not lighted.

Over at the Sultan Alam Shah Museum, a doll from Hungary had its country of origin labelled as “Hungry”.

Visitors to the National Automobile Museum in Sepang reported a drive shaft was misspelt as “shalf”.

There was also not enough information on why a 1904 Brushmobile vintage car was chosen as a star attraction other than that it was acquired from an antique supplier and there was only one such model in the country.
Car enthusiasts also complained that details explaining the different drive trains used in the different models of the national car sounded like they came out of an advertisement brochure.

There were no explanations on how the engines had evolved from one technology to another.

Visitors to the National Museum's temporary exhibition hall said it was extremely hot because the air-conditioner was not working.