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About us

Mission & vision

Keeping heritage is not enough. It has to be findable, researchable, shareable and open to question.

This page sets out what Museum Maluku exists to do now, and the kind of institution the foundation behind it is working to become.

Now

Our mission

Stichting Moluks Historisch Museum makes knowledge about the history, art, culture and development of Moluccans - the Moluccan Story - accessible to the widest possible public inside and outside the Netherlands.

In daily practice that comes down to a handful of verbs. We keep and document the collection. We research it and put it in context. We open it up, physically in the museum and digitally through the online collection. We share what we find, in exhibitions, publications, stories and programmes. And we pass it on, so the next generation inherits something they can still use.

We do that from Moluccan perspectives: starting with Moluccan histories, experiences and knowledge, rather than describing them from the outside.

Where we are going

Our vision

Stichting Moluks Historisch Museum shapes a contemporary heritage institution that manages collections, develops programmes and projects, and enters into partnerships with a range of partners. In doing so it encourages the participation of the Moluccan community and the building of Dutch society.

A contemporary heritage institution, for this museum, means three things at once: an archive that stays in use, a place where knowledge is built and shared, and a museum that makes its programme in relation with the communities it is about. Those three are explained below.

It also means the museum is not only a building. Museum Sophiahof is where you can visit us, and it is one of several ways the collection and the knowledge reach people: online, through research and loans to other institutions, through publications, and through work made with communities here and in Maluku.

What that means

Living archive, knowledge institution, community museum

Living archive

A collection is not an end point. Objects, photographs, archives and stories keep their meaning because people keep working on them: researching, describing, placing in context, digitising, and adding what they know. A great deal of what the museum knows about its own collection came from the families it came from.

Knowledge institution

The museum does more than collect. It builds knowledge about Moluccan history, culture and communities, connects sources that were scattered, makes research possible in the library and the archive, and puts its expertise at the disposal of other institutions. It is a modest organisation, and it works with researchers rather than in place of them.

Community museum

The museum works in relation with Moluccan communities. In relation with, and not on behalf of: there is no single Moluccan story and no single Moluccan voice. Generations, families, regions and convictions remember and judge differently, and the museum is a place where those differences can sit beside each other rather than be resolved into one account.

That means lived experience and community knowledge count as knowledge, and that people take part in the work: in stories, in programmes, in describing the collection, and as makers.

The move

Heritage stays alive when it can be used

Every one of these is a move from the left-hand term to the right-hand term. Neither side is abandoned: keeping is the condition for everything else.

  • Keeping

    making accessible

  • Collecting

    connecting

  • Holding knowledge

    sharing knowledge

  • Recording stories

    making room for new perspectives

  • Reaching an audience

    making participation possible

How the work is organised

Four lines of work

Collection and living archive

Keeping, documenting, digitising, researching and making heritage accessible.

Knowledge and expertise

Building knowledge, connecting sources, enabling research and sharing expertise with others.

Community and makers

Making room for participation, stories, community knowledge and the work of contemporary makers.

Education and public programme

Turning collection and knowledge into exhibitions, activities, school visits and conversation.

Principles

How we make choices

Connection

We work with communities, researchers, makers, institutions and partners. Much of what the museum knows, it knows through them.

Recognition

Moluccan heritage was built up and passed on largely outside the institutions that usually do that work. We treat it as heritage, and we name the people it came from as its source.

Authenticity

We start from Moluccan perspectives and lived experience, and we say whose account we are giving rather than presenting one as the account.

Care

We place objects, memories and perspectives in context and handle sensitive history carefully. We say what we know about something, and what we do not.

Accessibility

We want heritage and knowledge to be as findable, understandable and usable as they can be, for people who come to the museum and for people who never will.

Further reading

More about the museum

This page is about why the museum exists and where it is going. Who the museum is, and how the foundation behind it is governed, are set out elsewhere.