Museum's challenge is to stay relevant

Kota Kinabalu: The Sabah Museum must remain relevant for the next fifty years and beyond, said the museum director Joanna Kitingan."The museum is a place where we celebrate our journey to civilisation as a species, a place of curiosity and learning," she added.

The challenges faced by the institution include the pressure to adapt new developments in the museological circle in collection preservation and display as well as new technology in collection management and conservation, Joanna said while presenting a paper on the museum and Sabah's heritage titled Museum and Sabah's Heritage – Past, Present and Future at the G.C Woolley Mini Hall, Sabah Museum Complex on Thursday.

"Managing the present building is also a challenge," she said, addressing the leakage problem faced by the museum that required attention.

She was among the speakers in the seminar and workshop series held in conjunction with Sabah Museum's Golden Jubilee celebration here.

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Joanna provided an insight on the growth of the multi-disciplinary museum which started out in a Jesselton shophouse in Gaya Street before moving to and expanding at its current 46.7acre-site.

The museum comprises the Main Building, the Science and Technology Centre, the Heritage Village, Ethno-Botanical Garden and the Sabah Islamic Civilization Museum, which was set up in April 2002.

It also hosts 26 life-size traditional houses to date including Rungus, Tahol Murut, Bonggi, Bajau Laut, West Coast Bajau, Tombonuou and Tidong houses, which were made from organic materials and required maintenance, part of the challenges faced by the museum.

The museum also had exhibits from archaeological sites such as the ones in Baturong Cave and Tingkayu Lake in Kunak and Bukit Tengkorak, Semporna (which would be open to the public officially next year) while discovering more sites in collaboration with Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).

Joanna also revealed that the museum currently owned over 2.2 million exhibits, including cultural, archaeological, historical, natural, and science and technology collections.

"You can imagine where we are keeping all this," she jested, drawing laughter from the crowd.

A Singaporean PhD student from the University College London, Cai Yunci, 32, also presented a paper on the indigenous cultural villages titled Indigenous Cultural Villages As An Inclusive Museum Model: Issues And Challenges Of Showcasing Indigenous Cultural Heritage in Malaysia.

Cai, who had been in Sabah since September last year, shared her findings on four indigenous cultural villages and their communities in Malaysia; the Monsopiad Cultural Village and Linangkit Cultural Village, both in Sabah, the Mah Meri Cultural Village in Carey Island and the Orang Seletar Cultural Centre in Johor Bahru.

The indigenous people consisted of 60 per cent of the population in East Malaysia compared to 0.6 per cent in West Malaysia, making Sabah an ideal place to study the group, she explained.

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She touched on the cultural brokers who caused heritage dissonance in cultural villages, namely in Mah Meri cultural village in Carey Island by misinterpreting the community's ritual practices for 'touristy' effects.

She recommended that communities' needs to be put first while profit-making be seen as a secondary in the establishment of cultural villages, that also serve as an income source for the indigenous people.

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