To the table!
Now that we are heading towards the late summer days, and my own summer holiday is behind me, I am looking forward to a fine time with new challenges. We have found a workspace, for instance, where we are preparing large parts of our museum collection for digitisation. Think first and foremost of paper archives of Moluccan organisations and prominent figures. It is a step closer to realising one of our goals: making more Moluccan source material available digitally. How can you contribute? Have a look at the options for donating money or time. I am writing this column on the last day of my holiday at the dining table, while the children work on a collection of their own in clay.
My thoughts at the dining table
Speaking of the collection. I am particularly proud of the online series Maju Mundur, produced and realised by our content team. Where we had little or no physical space to show parts of our collection, we brought people together to talk about objects that play an important role in the Moluccan community. Thanks to its success, a new series of Maju Mundur will be launched soon. A s/o to the makers Yoram Tomatala, Miguell Kaidel and Seraya Tuasuun.
Before my holiday I received an invitation from Prime Minister Mark Rutte to join a conversation together with other Moluccan participants. Although it was a personal invitation, there is no way I can separate it from my role as museum director. The aim is an open conversation in which PM Rutte and State Secretary Van Ooijen (Health, Welfare and Sport) are seeking thoughts on the position taken by the Dutch government at the time of the Moluccans' passage to the Netherlands in 1951. I thought about that during my holiday.
At Museum Maluku, during the commemorative year 70 years of Moluccans in the Netherlands (2021), we devoted attention all year long – together with large groups from the Moluccan community – to that complex history, the arrival and above all the way those historical events still work through the present. I therefore look back with great pride on the broadcast Beta Disini (I am here) of 21 March 2021, which we developed together with production house Beyond Walls. With 50,000 views on YouTube and countless responses, we made clear that the Moluccan story matters, not only to the community itself but to the Netherlands as a whole. I will take the results of our projects, together with our visions for the future, to that table.
Henry Timisela Director
Read his other columns too: Halfway through 2022, Looking back & focus for 2022, A museum without a museum
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