ABSTRACT
Western-style museums were first established in what is now Indonesia in the eighteenth century by Dutch and other Europeans. During the colonial era, museums existed primarily to serve colonial interests. After Indonesia achieved independence in 1949, museums were to serve the people and their development. This chapter examines colonial and postcolonial museum development in Indonesia, and its concomitant frictions, or the competing interests and purposes museums are enlisted to serve. I consider the forms engagement takes under conditions of state-controlled cultural policy, focusing on my ethnographic study of the Provincial Museum of Central Kalimantan, Museum Balanga carried out from 1991–1992. My study is presented as an example of multi-sited museum ethnography, building on my previous research in the Netherlands.
