By A. Hamid Saifuddin

Now, more than ever, museums and galleries of sorts should be kept alive and well. As cultural repositories and custodians of the past, curators must find proactive ways to ensure that interests for such institutions remain relevant and constant.

As we are trapped at home (for a great majority at least), the time is ripe for them to revive visuals of artefacts so we could pay a visit online, from the comfort of our space currently.

It is also equally disappointing that museums and galleries here in Malaysia are not as active as the ones overseas; with their virtual reality visits and 360 degrees roam online.

My students and I have been working diligently around our writing assignments to find ways for such institutions to be heard and seen against the current barrier of movement during this trying time. I assigned them a task about penning their experiences (or not) with museums and/or art galleries so far.

Emporium of forgotten things

For an hour and a half each week over the course of three weeks, we talked about why there is a need to have these “building vaults artefacts” and why young adults today are latent to passive audiences to such places. To be brutally honest, they shared with me that either their parents do not have time to bring them or simply they themselves see no urgency to create neither buzz nor traffic to this “place where sentimental people hung out”.

Then, I shared with them my unique experiences with this place I called “an emporium of forgotten things”.

It can be said that a stroke of inspiration can occur at the most inconvenient of places. One might pick up a brush to paint after seeing a car crash and, at times, that flash of idea comes when you lay your head to bed. As a hermit 37-year-old adult, I have always found comfort in the eerie, long hallways of a museum to the brilliantly lit glass panels of an art gallery.

As an introvert forced into an extrovert industry, traipsing these corridors of curiosity truly can transport you back to where the days were simpler and the march for expedition of artefacts was the common behaviour.

As an 80s baby and later defined as a member of the Xennials (the only pool of babies born to experience the “first’s first”) by observant sociologists, there was not much entertainment you can get outside of the “idiot box” back then in the 90s (remember then we only had three channels to choose from). This is actually a good thing as we had to force ourselves to create our own activities to kill time. I recall vividly having a beach located a stone’s throw away from our house when we used to reside in Penaga, Butterworth, in Penang. Come to think of it, everywhere seems a walk away and a minute too soon when you are having fun under the sun.

However, it was not until we had packed and left the comfort we called cottage off Penaga, Penang, to the industrialised but nonetheless suburban streets of Subang Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan, that I had my first brush with visiting the National Museum, at the tender and probing-level age of seven. Mother would hold my hand as we peered into the glossy glass panels as she asked me questions back and forth about the pieces of artefacts in front of us. She had to hold my hand as I had a one-track mind, like all seven-year-olds, to be left to our own devices and roam the building unbridled as if we were Indiana Jones Jr.

Enlightening experience

As I grew older and life got in between it, I slowly realised this one unfortunate fact as I observed my students now that they, in a manner of speaking, were robbed of this wonderful and enlightening experience. Their parents were either too busy working, they themselves were given too many chores over the weekend to shoulder or, simply, they just do not want to palate such eccentric delicacies of sauntered observation.

Some might say that visiting museums and galleries is a snobbish fancy, but I sincerely beg to differ. It is reasonably priced (ticket fee is literally a steal for Malaysians), well-aged artefacts of yesteryear are well-placed and arranged akin to that of our overseas’ rival museums. All it needs now are young minds floating the alleys throughout the space. Imagine this: a gradual filling in of youths with their idealism, amped by their angst and forceful need for change, into a creative space. Nothing sparks a match like a youth empowered and emboldened.

How do we encourage the participation of the next generation to get out there and start appreciating our museums, galleries and parks? It’s worrying then before MCO took over our livelihood and it’s even more disparaging during MCO. I am afraid that the inevitable day would come where, one by one, these sacred heritage institutions would be closed and sealed away from us one day.

Revamping current policies to be more flexible and friendly towards heritage institutions that include active participation from all walks of life, starting especially from the young all the way to the old.

After all being said and done, I honestly believe that active participation from all Malaysians need to happen in order to inculcate some sense of belonging and, perhaps, instil the feeling of patriotism along the way. This is the time for us, using the time given to us now, to reflect on these valuable artefacts of their meaning and how long we have come since then.

-- BERNAMA

A. Hamid Saifuddin is Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Communication & Media Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Shah Alam.