AMI Chair Suggests Government Protect Collections Around 500 Museums

JAKARTA - Chairman of the Indonesian Museum Association (AMI) Putu Supadma Rudana advised the government to form the Indonesian Museum Agency in order to help protect and utilize the collections in around 500 museums.

"AMI hopes that an Indonesian Summary Agency can soon be formed to help the government protect and utilize around 500 museums throughout Indonesia," he said in a statement in Jakarta, quoted from Antara, Sunday, September 17.

This was followed by a fire that occurred in the back area of the National Museum A Building or Elephant Museum, Central Jakarta on Saturday night (16/9) allegedly due to an electrical short circuit.

Moreover, until now the collection managed by the National Museum is 140 thousand objects, consisting of seven types of collections including archaeology, ethnography, geography, ceramics, numeresmatics and heladrik, prehistoric, historical.

The National Museum was built on an area of 26,500 square meters and divided into building A and building B. Building A for exhibition spaces and collection storage while building B for offices, conference rooms, laboratories, and libraries.

According to Putu, the government must take lessons from the National Museum fire incident, including paying more intensive attention and protection to the existence of buildings and collections of 500 museums in Indonesia.

"Especially, related to the provision of insurance for the safety of buildings and their collection objects for various detrimental incidents," he said.

In addition, the scope of museum management arrangements in Indonesia also needs to be comprehensively regulated as a basis for museum management and development as well as the development of the human resource capacity of museum managers.

"For this reason, the Indonesian Museum Association hopes that the DPR together with the government will immediately discuss the Bill on the Summary," he said.