De Nieuwe Kerk Presents Exhibition of Indonesian Art
Major Project with Leiden and Jakarta
From 17 December 2005 to 17 April 2006 De Nieuwe Kerk will present the exhibition Indonesia: the discovery of the past. It comprises over 300 masterpieces from the Museum Nasional Indonesia in Jakarta and the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde (National Museum of Ethnology) in Leiden. On display will be six large sculptures from the Singasari period (13th century), important gold finds and palace treasures from Sulawesi, Lombok and Bali, as well as rare ethnographica from West and East Indonesia, including New Guinea. Works from the recently discovered Wonoboyo gold treasure will also be on view. Much of the material has never been exhibited to the public before.
The exhibition presents the history of the collection and distribution of the Indonesian heritage brought together by the Batavian Society. This society's collection grew as a result of scientific and military expeditions, the passions of individual collectors such as governors and missionaries, and gifts from princes and sultans to the Dutch royal family or Indonesian rulers. The collection includes gold and other jewellery, buddhas, sculpture, krises (daggers) and wayang puppets. From 1822 official policy was to divide collections between two institutions: the Museum Nasional in Jakarta and the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde in Leiden. This is the first time that the collections have been brought back together, for an exhibition in Jakarta (which opened in August) before going on view at De Nieuwe Kerk in December.
In total some 330 objects, archaeological and anthropological, will be on view, 160 from Indonesia and 170 from the Netherlands. The two museums in Leiden and Jakarta have the largest and finest collections of Indonesian heritage in the world. After their shared colonial past, when the collection was assembled but also divided between the two museums, this exhibition illustrates the new cooperation and relationship between Indonesia and the Netherlands as equal partners.
The exhibition Indonesia: the discovery of the past is accompanied by a catalogue in Dutch, English and Indonesian.
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