How do we turn the most banal of subjects into exciting ones? After decades of trial and error, the National Museum might finally have found the answer.
Sniggers and smirks — these are two of the most common reactions when I tell people I’ve just returned from the National Museum. To them I ask: When was your last visit?
A decade, maybe two, ago?
Since its opening on Aug 31, 1963, our National Museum has undergone various tweaks and transformations. But its latest facelift in 2006 has proved to be the most successful one yet, with many history lovers and pseudo-intellectuals finally taking notice.
“Yes, we realised how old and worn the museum was getting,” says Datuk Ibrahim Ismail, director-general of the Department of Museums in Malaysia. “People visit once, and they don’t come back. We want to change that.”
Four years and RM20mil later, the transformation is complete. The museum, still retaining its old shell, was relaunched without much fanfare. Life for those in it went on pretty much as usual, albeit with one difference.
“You can actually see how excited our visitors are now,” says Zamrul Amri Zakaria, senior assistant director of the National Museum’s conservation centre. “They’re all smiling and snapshot-happy, unlike last time.”
The statistics say it all: In 2000, the museum welcomed 556,694 local and foreign visitors. In 2009, as final stages of renovations were being carried out, the number of visitors have almost doubled to 961,149.
The sense of change is most evident the moment you step into the main hall. What was once a cross between someone’s dusty attic and a junk shop is now a sleek double-storey atrium which makes full use of light and space. One of the museum’s prized possessions, Chinese ceramics from a doomed East India ship bound for Madras, lies behind protective glass in the main hall.
From here, the four permanent galleries are visible: the Prehistory Gallery and the Malay Kingdoms Gallery on the first floor, the Colonial Era Gallery and Malaysia Today Gallery on the second.
In a dramatic departure from the confusion and lack of coherence that characterised the old museum, the exhibits are well organised and aesthetically appealing. Advanced technology is also employed throughout the museum, from the temperature-and-humidity-controlled case that serve as the Perak Man’s final resting place to the walking-talking diorama detailing Malaya’s early spice trade in the Malay Kingdoms Gallery.
“People are bored of reading from walls and diagrams. So we thought, why not have something that people can explore or interact with? So we did,” states Ibrahim.
What lies beneath
Imagine being responsible for 415,081 artefacts on a daily basis, with 322,631 of them archaeological remnants, 64,344 animal and plant specimens and 28,106 ethnological objects.
“These are all government assets. My job is to keep a close eye on them — or else . . .,” chimes Mohd Razaimi Hamat, registrar of the Department of Registration in the National Museum. “Memang stress, but I have to get used to it.”
We are in the heart of the building, the museum’s repository, a network of vaulted, windowless chambers two floors underground. In each room, row upon row of sturdy shelves stretch from floor to ceiling and is capable of supporting dozens of brass urns, strange headdresses, elaborately carved instruments and other antiquities.
I’m thrilled at having discovered this place that most visitors are oblivious to. Down here, the air is dry, the smell is musty and the only sound audible was that of our footsteps.
“There are currently over 1,000 objects in this repository alone,” says Razaimi. “The rest are being exhibited in our 20 museums across Malaysia or on loan to a handful of schools and universities.”
More impressive is the fact that this number is growing slowly but steadily.
The museum, according to Razaimi, acquires new objects through several ways: some are purchased, some are donated to the museum and some are on a short-to-long-term loan. A small percentage, however, have been “discovered”, mainly through excavations and expeditions.
“People try to sell us their family heirloom or a piece of antique all the time,” says Razaimi. “We would accept their offer based on two conditions. One, it must be personally owned and, two, it must have a significant historical or cultural value. The price must also be right, of course.”
“There is a technical committee to study the overall feasibility of acquiring these items. We have a budget of RM200,000 to work with this year. Not a lot, you know?” he adds.
Some of the most expensive acquisitions to date include Chinese porcelain vases and antique jewellery.
“The costs for many of these items range up to five figures,” says Razaimi. “But usually we try to haggle.”
Given the combined value of the artefacts, nothing ever goes in or out of this place without being closely monitored. That includes the cleaning staff and the occasional media people like me.
“Each and every one of these come with an ID tag to differentiate it from the rest. I have to fill in the requisite forms every time something is being carted to and from this place,” says Razaimi.
When asked if anything has “magically” disappeared, Razaimi replies: “Yes, we have to make a police report if that happens. After a while, however, we usually realise that it was just sitting in the repository all along. We just misplaced it.”
Then again, it could very well be Casper’s doing. The repository is, after all, rumoured to be haunted. It is known as “Tingkat Dua” (Level Two) to all museum employees because of the many reputed strange occurrences.
“Yes, sometimes people hear footsteps and voices but that’s because we’re dealing with very, very old objects, some of which purportedly have mystical powers,” says Razaimi with a chuckle.
“Anyway, it doesn’t really bother me. I’m just here to do my job, trying to keep everything in one place.”
Make or break
The mood is decidedly more cheerful one floor up, where museum employees are busy restoring thousand-ringgit artefacts to their former glory. This is Zamrul’s territory, and he is waiting for me behind a big desk filled with books and random knick-knacks.
“A conservator is someone who is highly trained, with years of experience under his belt,” says Zamrul. “That’s why I am reluctant to use that word, even with myself. It took me seven years to learn it, but I am still learning, and so is everyone in here.”
A wooden bookcase stacked high with scientific journals with academic-sounding titles like Unlig’s Corrosion Handbook, Metal 98 and Conservation of Plastics towers behind him.
Zamrul, who specialises in metal, is one of the four conservators here. Each is an expert in a particular field, but they are required to work with everything — pottery, historical documents, traditional costumes, human bones.
“First, we need to analyse what needs to be done with the help of chemical tests, X-rays, and microscopes. The results of this research help them determine the age and condition of a given object — information that is vital to the restoration process
“There are no hard-and-fast rules to follow because what you find in Europe is different from here. For instance, they have a lot of oak furniture, but we have a lot of teak. They have dry weather while ours is humid. That’s why we need to adapt what we’ve learned abroad,” says Zamrul.
Right outside is the lab in which he spends most of his time. A tattered bamboo-and-coconut-shell body armour and pieces of an earthen jar sat on a wide table, together with chisels, scalpels and beakers of liquid plaster and acidic concoctions. To the untrained eye, the place looks more a carpentry workshop than a place of scientific undertakings.
“It is still a man’s job,” says Zamrul. “We’re expected to repair surfaces, reassemble objects with broken parts, build mounts for vehicles and construct copies of artifacts. Sometimes, we have to do all of this outdoors under the hot sun, like what we did with the locomotive you see outside. I don’t know many women who are able to withstand the heat and grime.”
His motto: “Let us fall, but not our artifacts”.
Which brings us to his most difficult projects to date. Zamrul can’t really decide if the antique body armour or the diesel-powered locomotive (an actual model donated by KTM) takes the cake. But after some thought, he says: “The body armour was badly damaged and it took three months for us to restore it. We had to be very thorough due to the delicate nature of the object. The train, however, is much bigger and needed a lot more manpower.”
Now complete, this gigantic hunk of maroon-coloured metal, complete with tracks and stoplights, stands proudly in front of the museum’s archway. At night, it blinks to life, a beacon of history.
“I feel a bit like a contractor sometimes,” he says. “Except that I don’t work for money and I have to be extremely patient. But it all pays off when you see how people react when they come across this train. An elderly gentleman conveyed his excitement to me because, apparently, it brings back fond memories.”
Unfortunately, I was too stumped with the museum’s interior transformation to notice. Disappointed but not deterred, Zamrul tells me to take a look.
It didn’t take me long to spot it, glinting underneath the midday sun. The train is regal. Stunning. Evocative. It conjures of images of another time when rubber plantations were many and people were real. This important remnant of time’s past is not lost on tourists, who came bounding out of tour buses with their SLRs clicking away.
Perhaps one day, young Malaysians will be just as happy to see it.
Jalan Damansara, Kuala Lumpur
Tel : (03) 2267 1000/2282 6255
Opening hours: 9am-6pm every day except Aidil Fitri and Aidil Adha.
The good guides
Do you know who manufactures the most rubber tyres in the world? Lego!” quips homemaker Chrissy Lioe, 54. “A little boy asked me that, and I didn’t know the answer!”
Lioe, a UK native, is relating her experience as a volunteer tour guide at the museum. Unusual or difficult questions are apparently not uncommon here, but she is more than happy to learn something new on the job every day.
“It’s really not difficult once you get the hang of it,” Lioe says. “The hard part is gaining enough confidence to speak about other cultures as if you were part of it.”
But for what its worth, museum authorities are serious about training guides before sending them out to history’s battlefield, armed with equal amounts of knowledge and wit because “you don’t want to be the boring lecturer who goes on and on while other people fall asleep,” points out Lioe.
Participants are required to attend more than 30 hours of hands-on training, in and out of class, and give three public presentations.
“In addition to the classes, we have focus groups and field trips to archaeological sites in Penang and Malacca. Now I know more about Malaysia than my own husband, who’s a Malaysian!” exclaims Lioe gleefully.
However, another volunteer guide at the museum, Zahara Shahriman, 44, stresses that it’s not just fun and games.
“Participants need to know that it’s not some cultural programme they’ve signed up for — it may be fun, but we take our job very seriously and we need to be clued up on a lot of things,” she says.
When Zahara says a lot, she means it: Would-be guides have to know history beyond what they’ve learned in textbooks, and not just Malaysian history but Asian history as well. Lessons encompass everything from religion and arts and crafts to trade and culture.
“Everything is interconnected,” Zahara says. “For instance, it’s impossible to learn about communism without learning about what’s happening in China at the same time.”
Some participants, according to Zahara, aren’t able to cope. A class of 30 people at the beginning of a new intake would decrease to about 20 by graduation time. Still, there are many like Lioe and Zahara who choose to soldier on because of their passion. The museum has about 110 volunteer guides from different countries and different backgrounds.
There are lawyers, businesswomen and retirees, and they speak Mandarin, Japanese, French and a host of other languages.
Meanwhile, Lioe and Zahara have been conducting free tours for years. They get to work closely with the museum’s curators on temporary exhibitions, giving feedback and suggestions.
“I’m enjoying every minute of it,” says Zahara. “But it’s even better when I see how interested other people are in Malaysia’s history as well. Whenever I bring a group of Indian tourists around, they get very excited once they learn that Malaysia was once a Hindu country. The Chinese, meanwhile, want to know more about Cheng Ho’s relationship with Malacca. It’s great.”
What about Malaysians?
“Strangely enough, neither Zahara nor I have ever brought a Malaysian around before,” says Lioe. “They’re just not interested. It’s quite sad because they think they know a lot about their own history. But, really, it’s all about having an interest in the way you live, being proud of your own heritage.”
Zahara agrees.
“The museum scene has really improved in Malaysia, but the government can only do so much. Now it’s the people’s turn.” - Stories by Louisa Lim
For more information on volunteer guides or to sign up as a volunteer, please contact En. Jamil at (03) 2282 6255 or e-mail jamil.haron@jmm.gov.my. There are free English tours daily at 10am, except Sundays. Please refer to www.jmm.gov.my for tours in other languages.
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