The Tsunami Museum’s only really impressive feature so far is its architecture but visitors do have the chance to walk through a dark, claustrophobic corridor with water walls that simulate the tsunami’s size. Artwork on display offers a glimpse of the heart-wrenching stories of loss. (JG Photo)
Aceh’s Tsunami Museum is full of possibility. Unfortunately, that’s about all it is full of at the moment.
The walls designed for exhibitions remain bare and white. The top floor, which includes a rooftop garden that has been designed to be used as an escape point should another tsunami ever strike, remains closed to visitors.
A small selection of tsunami-inspired artworks hang in one gallery. The faces are mostly of women and children caught in a moment of horror as they are engulfed by seas rendered in gouache and oil paint. In another room are rows and rows of terribly pixelated images of the impact of the disaster on the province, with no information accompanying them except for headings (only in Indonesian) reading “Before Tsunami,” “After Tsunami” and “Tsunami Recovery.”
The images are obviously harrowing and powerful, despite having been reproduced in poor quality. But the exhibits are disorganized and the whole display seems temporary — hopefully that is the case — and lacking in context.
Perhaps this is not surprising. Like other parts of the city of Banda Aceh, the tsunami museum is still very much under construction more than five years after the disaster that devastated Aceh province. It has been a controversial project from the beginning. Opened in February 2009 by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the museum was accused of taking resources away from those trying to rebuild their lives in the tsunami’s aftermath. Others said it was too soon to have a museum that memorialized the destruction and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Obviously houses, schools, medical facilities and restoring people’s livelihoods are far more pressing than museums in the aftermath of any disaster. I was confused, however, as to why the absolutely stunning building was opened before it had anything substantial to display.
The architecture and design of the museum should make it one of the country’s finest contemporary cultural assets. But without enough attention to the exhibitions it was created to house, it could easily end up becoming resented as a giant, expensive monument of tragedy, with little meaning for the community most closely affected by the event it attempts to retell.
It could also suffer the fate that pretty much every other government-run museum in this country faces — being a poorly organized institution with so little information it is barely worth visiting, especially for foreigners. I usually leave Indonesia’s museums completely baffled and rarely any more enlightened than when I walked inside.
The Rp 67 billion ($7 million) building, designed by architect Ridwan Kamil, has a beautiful amphitheater, garden and public areas, quiet rooms for reflection and exhibition galleries. The spaces are extraordinary and certainly measure up to many of the top contemporary museums in the world. It was obviously designed with the best intentions to engage the community and provide visitors with a place to remember, reflect and grow. But if its purpose is really to be a museum, or even just a relevant public building, it still has a long way to go.
I wanted to know what the province looked like before and after the tsunami. I wanted to know about the science of tsunamis and earthquakes. I wanted to know about how the government, international humanitarian groups and non-governmental organizations faced the mammoth task of rebuilding and what lessons were learned that could be applied if such a catastrophe ever struck again. But most of all, I wanted to hear, see and read people’s stories.
Without a deeper connection to the community and displays that educate as well as help the healing process, it will never be more than an architecturally interesting chunk of concrete that cost a whole lot of money.
Just outside the museum lies the Aceh International Thank the World Garden. I walked past it three times during my stay in Banda Aceh and it was always full of kids playing football or just hanging out, eating ice cream under the trees among the plaques thanking the nations that provided aid after the tsunami. Some punk kid has tagged graffiti on one of the plaques already, just as kids do in public parks anywhere in the world.
The park was officially opened last year, around the same time as the tsunami museum. And like so much in this reconstructed city that is connected to the aftermath of tragedy, the park has already found its place in community life.
I really hope the tsunami museum can find a similar future ahead of it.
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