Our museums should open till 9pm
Published on: Sunday, June 30, 2019
By: David Thien
KOTA KINABALU: Complaints by tourists that nightlife attractions are rather limited or unknown especially in the state capital can be encouraged to develop new tourism products like visit to the Sabah Museum if it were to open until 9pm on certain days of the week.
Two examples are the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum which opens until 8 pm and 10 pm respectively even in winter Friday which daily draws thousands of tourists, and they are free admission museums, unlike the Sabah Museum.
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Sabah Museum has a traditional native houses of Sabah attraction within its compound where staff or volunteers can dress up in their native attires to greet visitors to attract them to buy and try Sabah food cuisine or handicraft items like the sompoton music instrument with musician teacher to show tourists how to play it, whether or not they buy one.
A mock ‘tamu’ can be staged to earn extra income.
An example is the Kew Palace in Kew Gardens in Richmond, London closes at 8 pm in summer where staff are dressed up in their period costumes to interact with local and foreign tourists of a nostalgia lifestyle in the bygone days as the King’s servants etc. Kew Gardens charges admission fees, and daily thousands visit its attractions. Sabah Museum staff should be the ones to wear traditional attires every working day.
Such new tourism product development prong in Sabah needs enlightened and inspiring political leadership to encourage civil servants used to take for granted office hours routines and renumeration perks, to do their utmost in the interests of the state.
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It takes time to popularise Sabah Museum as a tourism product in the evenings, but it is worthwhile to try whether or not admission fee is levied.
The private sector cannot be expected altruistically to run museum attractions ever since a Kopi Tiam Museum popular with tourists viewing its old black and white photographs and items that adorned walls and displays, closed down along Australia Place without any government support a few years ago. Visitors were not compelled to spend on food and beverages served as in the bygone North Borneo era.
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Another inspiring example is the National Museum of Singapore where it is an asset to attract tourists that can inspire our Sabah Museum to live up to its fullest potential.
As the museum Director Anglita Teo puts it: “I am a strong believer that history provides us with important lessons about today.
“For example, our current exhibition ‘Packaging Matters’ is all about old packaging, of which the museum has a collection.
“It is tailored for a young audience, so families can talk about the pressing issue of recycling today, but we are using history as the entry point to facilitate such conversations.
“Enabling this sort of dialogue means being a part of the community we are surrounded by,” Teo said.
According to her, many encyclopaedic museums around the world are still popular, but they have legacy issues – controversies around how their collections were acquired and where their financial support comes from. But what has really gotten her excited is the rising prominence of city museums globally, like the Museum of London.
So likewise, so can Sabah Museum achieves much more, besides the pressing need for a city museum that a previous mayor lost the tussle of getting the old post office to be one to a rotated chief minister who wanted the historical building to be used as a tourism office, a wastage of tourism opportunity cost as it was a centre that hardly opens after government working hours.
Teo explains: “Museums are as much about the community as they are about their collection.
“As Singapore is a city state, the National Museum of Singapore has to be both a national museum and a people’s museum.
“Singaporeans need to have a sense of ownership and feel like it makes a difference to their lives.
She reveals that the museum is working with Singapore hospitals to bring dementia patients to her museum to interact with the collection and start conversations, besides working with various special-needs schools.
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“We have ‘Quiet Mornings’ period, so that people with additional needs or wheelchairs can come in a bit earlier, when it is not so crowded. “We are a civic space now as well as a museum – that’s what I mean by making a difference,” Teo enthuses.
When the Sabah State Library had an outlet at the Suria Sabah Mall, a number of tourists also visited to look at materials there to pass quality time in the rainy quiet evenings, reading displays, tourism subject matters and to acquire an understanding of the local public facility open to visitors and to acquaint with quality book reading people and library members there.