'Are you called Museum Maluku, Moluks Historisch Museum or MuMa?' is a question I am asked more than once. If you follow our social media channels and website, you soon discover that we are keeping Museum Maluku as our name. For now. Because are we still actually a museum? This is a question that has been discussed internally for some time, and I can report that a number of organisational changes are coming.
At the moment our office is at Museum Sophiahof in The Hague, and from here the team works on various projects. The temporary exhibition IKAT (physical and virtual) , in which we give artists with a Moluccan affinity a platform, and the online broadcasts of BETA DISINI are two examples. We will also be (even) more present online by delivering more Moluccan video and audio content in the period ahead. We also help those interested in their search for Moluccan history with the aid of our digital archive. Digitising our collection further is essentialfor that.
Even so, Museum Sophiahof regularly receives visitors who expect to find the Moluccan museum collection in The Hague. Sadly we have had to disappoint those visitors. Put simply, we lack the space to tell the story of Moluccan history through objects from our collection. Precisely now, when there is such a need for it. Fortunately there is Nationaal Monument Kamp Vught , where the story of the KNIL Moluccans in particular can be seen, and there are numerous local and national initiatives that meet this need.
Still plenty of paperwork, CDs and video tapes for us to digitise
Together with our partner, the Landelijk Moluks Monument foundation, we are thinking about the future of the story of Moluccan history. That the monument must be built is important, but its educational aspect is just as relevant. We will be working hard on that in the period ahead. As soon as the situation allows it again, there will also be public programming with themes that are relevant and that bear on that Moluccan story, in all its diversity.
As the headline of this column says, we are a museum that cannot show its rich museum collection in the traditional way. In these extraordinary times of pandemic and rapid technological development we are constantly looking for new ways to give the Moluccan story the platform it deserves. Innovation and an eye on the future are the key words here.
