DISPLAYING THE POSTCOLONIAL PAST:
THE KUDUS KRETEK MUSEUM IN JAVA
The Kudus Kretek Museum was founded in 1986 as a
tribute to local entrepreneurship and to the origins of
clove cigarette (kretek) production in Kudus, Central
Java.l This essay analyzes how local residents perceive
this museum visually and culturally. It also seeks to
answer the questions how and why Indonesians display
relics of industrial labor relations and local commodity
production as signs of their postcolonial past?
Museums embody an institutional authority in their
capacity to exhibit the past or others, but they are also
cultural artifacts themselves (Kahn 1995:325). The
proliferation of museums in Southeast Asia character-
izes the postcolonial era since World War II, especially
the interests of the New Order state in Indonesia.2 The
National Museum, which houses the ancient treasures
of the archipelago's prehistory and Indic-influenced
past in a colonial style building in downtown Jakarta,
has been remodelled substantially to include new cli-
mate-controlled exhibition halls and display cases for
artifacts. In contrast, new museums dedicated to politi-
cal movements and to the history of the state rely on
simulation and dioramas rather than on actual antiqui-
ties. These national museumsall located in Jakarta
and its environsadvance a political agenda to secure
the legitimacy of Suharto's New Order state in its self-
proclaimed Age of Development ("Jaman
Pembangunan "), which some Indonesians refer to cyni-
cally as 'the era of construction.'3 Indeed, these new
museums are initiated as construction projects, while
regional museums refurbish palaces or colonial build-
ings to create a postmodern pastiche of old and new
architectural forms.
Regional and private museums also signify the
politics of representation in their construction, patron-
age and local appeal. However, the visual symbolism
28 Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997
G. G. WEK
and design of private museumsas well as their pa-
tronagediverge from the political agenda of securing
the state its place in history. Instead, private museums
view the postcolonial past from more local perspec-
tives, those of entrepreneurial enclaves in the colonial
Indies.
While the visual means of exhibition in all Indone-
sian museums share an eerie resemblance to museums
in Europe and the United States because the labels and
techniques of display are similar, private museums in
particular are both emblems and enactments of
postcolonial modernity. That is, their exhibits evoke
not only a narrative of the past, but an ongoing and
active engagement with the present social order. More-
over, local Javanese museum-goers' viewing practices
enact this doubled vision of museums as portraits of
past and present social life.
LINKING THE ARCHAIC WITH THE MODERN
The proliferation of museums in Southeast Asia has
been analyzed as a political agenda to ritualize state
authority and to link the archaic with the modern
(Anderson 1991b: 178). Nineteenth-century colonial
archeology, scholarship and lobbying efforts to restore
religious sites to their former state staged a refiguring of
time for the new nation. Ancient religious sites became
emblems of national myths of origin for several South-
east Asian postcolonial countries as these ancient monu-
mentsBorobudur in Indonesia and Angkor Wat in
Cambodia, for exampletransposed the glories of past
realms into new forms of modernity for the nation
(Anderson ibid.: 179-183).
Indonesian museums have inherited this role of
state monuments; those constructed since the country's
Visual Anthropology Review
independence preserve nationalist memorabilia as icons
of collective memory (Anderson 1991b: 178-184). Since
1966, however, the New Order government has es-
chewed the nationalist memorabilia and social realist
style monuments that President Sukarno had sponsored
to portray "The People" and "The Nation." New Order
museums embrace modes of simulation: photographs,
dioramas and reconstructed scenes of historic events.
Although these modes preserve a political dimension to
museum display, their range of representation has shifted
from actual relics of state to simulacra of moments in
time.
This shift to simulation and 'flattening of time' is
exemplified best in the theme park, "Miniature Indone-
sia" (Taman Mini) built in south Jakarta in 1971, and in
the Indonesian Museum added to its grounds in 1980.
The park glosses over the violent transition between
Indonesia's old and new order regimes by connecting
the past with the future through a present which is
continuously rendered as cultural icons of regional
tradition (Anderson 1991b: 176-177; Pemberton
1994:152-161). Pemberton focuses on the replication
and miniaturization of cultural monuments, as well as
the performance of mock life-crisis rituals within re-
constructed traditional houses (rumah adat).* Thus the
Suharto government appropriates visual signs of re-
gional culture and ritual events to generate a national,
albeit generic, view of Indonesian culture for display.
Regional museums commemorate past polities and
sultanates in a similar, simulated fashion (Taylor
1994:71-74). They often exhibit relics, regalia and
traditional arts as nostalgia for prior polities superceded
by the state, although to turn a palace into a museum
alludes to current powers of the state as well. Regional
museums of former royalties also make use of simulacra
of regalia to perpetuate and to enhance tourism as a
visual experience. For example, museums on the
former spice islands of Ternate and Tidore in Eastern
Indonesia conserve memorabilia of the former sultans.
Visitors to these museums are escorted to the main hall
in which artifacts and the daily wardrobe of the sultan
and his retinue are displayed. Cabinets with mannikins
G. G. Weix is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Montana. Her
publications include articles in INDONESIA and Southeast Asian Linguistics Proceedings. She is preparing a
book for Duke University Press.
Visual Anthropology Review
dressed in both noble and commoner costumesorigi-
nals and reconstructionsline the walls of the former
palace. The civil servant guides encourage visitors to
view the fashion show as a glimpse of the past, although
museum-goers are forbidden to photograph the exhib-
its.5
In contrast to the museums described above, Indo-
nesian private museums are dedicated to the origins of
work and commodity production in industrial form.
They juxtapose objects, photographs and dioramas to
illustrate prior stages of industrial technology and labor
for collective viewing. Private museums established
during the last decadealmost exclusively in Central
Javahave been founded to display something rather
different from cultural unity or prior polities: namely,
the origins and development of industry, particularly
those capitalist enterprises that emerged during the
colonial era. The photographs, memorabilia and arti-
facts are displayed in converted factory, warehouse, or
administrative spaces, or in new buildings built for the
purpose of display.
Civil servants say that private museums aim to
attract both domestic and foreign tourists to witness
these exhibits.6 Yet because industries are associated
with local reputation, these private museums are lo-
cated in places which would otherwise escape the gaze
of international tourism, such as the town of Kudus on
the north coast of Java. Moreover, it is not clear that
foreign tourists would be interested in a place like the
Kudus Kretek Museum, since the artifacts on display
are signs not of local culture, but of the local economy
transformed over time.
Private museums, while part of the expansion of
tourism in Indonesia, also have local effects.7 While
they display aspects of industry as archaic, they create
a social context in which Javanese visitors encounter
visual signs of local patronage and social hierarchy. To
illustrate this context and give evidence of these differ-
ent viewing practices, I present a brief ethnographic
description of Kudus and its economic and social order
which has generated specific terms of spectatorship. I
then compare visual and cultural analysis of the private
Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997 29
museum there. The Kudus Kretek Museum is unusual
because it represents the colonial era, in part, as an
imaginary past. Its exhibits contribute to the perpetual
authority and status of a local elite, but only because it
is visited by local residents.
The Kudus Kretek Museum was one of many civic
construction projects designed to promote tourism along
the north coast during the 1980s. Simultaneous to the
museum's construction, a tower was erected near the
old bus terminal. Bricks, bamboo scaffolding and bags
of cement surrounded both projects for months; the
tower was slated as a new monument surrounded by a
park.8 The tower abstractly resembled the Menara, a
minaret before the tomb of Sunan Kudus in the oldest
part of town. The museum was exhibited in miniature
in the provincial government booth at the Development
Fair in August 1986. These construction projects were
designed to supplement, if not replace, the original
sites. "Visitors don't need to go to West Kudus to see
the Menara," a young man told me proudly,'Tourists
can get off the bus to see the new monument; they can
visit the museum instead of West Kudus." Such projects
often literally stood for tourism, when I asked one
pedicab driver about the monument under construction
he guessed it was 'probably a hotel.'
Figure 1. At the opening of the Kudus Kretek Museum, visitors tour the building.
Photo courtesy of GAPPRI office, Kudus, 1986.
30 Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997
DEDICATING THE PAST
The Kudus Kretek Museum was dedicated in October
1986.9 Several months prior to its completion, my host
had referred to the museum as simply the 'project'
(proyjek) sponsored jointly by local businesses in town.
Its purpose was to illustrate the historical development
of clove cigarette manufacture and also to commemo-
rate aprevious generation of entrepreneurs as Indonesia's
first indigenous capitalists.
Then Interior Minister Supardjo Rustam was in-
vited from Jakarta to speak at the dedication ceremony.
He had arrived with much fanfare the morning of the
ceremony. After initial remarks, he invited four men to
stand behind him at the podium, introducing them in
turn as the 'cigarette kings' (raja rokok) the descen-
dents of the industry's most illustrious founders.10 Then
the minister related a brief story to the hundreds of
seated guests, dignitaries, managers, workers, and staff
present. The previous year, as he recovered from a
mysterious illness, the idea came to him to call for a
regional museum (museum daerah) to commemorate
indigenous business and entrepreneurship.
Central Java already had two other museums dedi-
cated to industry. The first was a converted sugar cane
Visual Anthropology Review
processing plant in Klaten just
northeast of Yogyakarta, and
the second, a railway station
in Ambarawa, a small sleepy
town on the thoroughfare from
Semarang to Yogyakarta. The
minister dismissed those mu-
seums as Dutch colonial en-
terprises. Supardjo Rustam
envisioned a museum that
would emphasize the spirit of
native entrepreneurship. So,
he told the audience, he ap-
proached the directors of the
four largest firms in Kudus to
contribute the funds to pur-
chase land and to defray the
costs of constructing a mu-
seum dedicated to 'native' in-
dustry. Figure 2. The Kudus Kretek Museum at its opening, October 1986. Photn
The museum, an impres- courtesy of GAPPRI office, Kudus.
sive building with a circular
driveway, was three kilometers south of town and
surrounded by rice fields. Only by driving carefully REASSERTING LOCAL HIERARCHIES
down a small dirt lane toward the rural district of Loram
could one reach this new landmark. From the highway How do local Javanese residents encounter a museum
approaching Kudus the roof of the museum was barely as a narrative recalling the past?" Why did local
visible across the rice-fields. Local residents referred to residents visit the museum at all? One answer to this
the site as 'aquietplace' (tempatsepi), both figuratively question is gained by highlighting the position of local
in its distance from commercial centers and literally in elites as centers of patronage. For example, along the
its isolation from traffic. For many Javanese the phrase north coast of Java where courts were distant and
also connotes a place such as a cemetery or remote sultanate power contested, Islamic saints and merchant
mountain pilgrimage site where spirits dwell. communities formed an alternate apex to the hierarchy
Despite its isolated location, the cigarette museum's of aristocrats in Javanese court society (Florida
dedication ceremony was lively and attended by nu- 1995:322-326). Even in the court cities, Muslim mer-
merous civil servants and business leaders, managers chant communities would emulate the rank of noblit
and workers. Following the speeches, young women but achieve their status through their acquisition of
dressed as nineteenth-century market traders performed wealth, in contrast to aristocratic elites and government
a dance simulating the gestures of women rolling and officials, who viewed social rank as a priori and in some
trimming cigarettes to the recordings of popular ways initiatory to acquiring wealth (Brenner 1991:57-
Sundanese music. The officials unveiled a statue of 58).
peasants as guerilla fighters illustrating the struggles of Herein lies a clue to how some Javanese visitors
the Indonesian Revolution (1945-1949). Then their experienced the museum. First, in the dedication cer-
committee released balloons while the audience rose emony itself, we can see evidence of an assertion of
and began a slow tour of the facility. The tour followed local hierarchies. When the state minister narrated the
a visual trail throughout the building and the guests story of personal recovery from illness, he conveyed the
viewed photographs, dioramas and items as signs of the aim of the museumto represent a collective pastin
past. terms familiar to Javanese: to reciprocate a generalized

Visual Anthropology Review Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997 31

debt to an unseen source which had clearly restored his entertainment events and displayed company logos to
health. At the same time, the state did not sponsor the advertise new cigarette brands (Hatley 1994:257). With
museum. Rustam's request for donations from Kudus the advent of a (short-lived) national film industry and
businessmenwhom he called traders (pedagang), a print advertising in the 1980s, firms expanded the
quaint term which belied their status as corporate ex- visible reach of their logos to a broad range of public
ecutive officers of multi-million dollar enterprises events. Their logos emblazoned banners hung at com-
made them the sponsors of the project. Their generosity merce fairs, competitive sports events, public and reli-
befit their positions as local benefactors, in this case, of gious school activities, even the flower wreaths sent at
a state project funded with private support. Thus, the Chinese funerals. These signs of advertising and pa-
contested hierarchy between aristocrats and merchants, tronage accompanied the museum dedication ceremony
or its modern equivalent, state ministers and business- as well, and asserted for large and small firms equiva-
men, was made visible at the reception. lent visible status, regardless of their size or prosperity.
Second, the four firm owners received the state The competition to display logos heightened their iconic
minister as an honored guest visiting Kudus, in that his importance as sources of patronage. For example, my
visit resonated with prior visits by colonial state offi- neighbor described many sports events simply by iden-
cials. These men's fathers and grandfathers had hosted tifying the sponsor or patron: "...that's aDjarum event"
Javanese royalty and foreign emissaries alike.12 Local (Djarum being a local brand of clove cigarette).
historical and biographical accounts cite visits as evi-
dence of the fame of early Indonesian capitalists, as if
Javanese sultans and Dutch governor generals traveled
to Kudus primarily to visit its entrepreneurs.
Still, the minister asserted some primacy to the
New Order state to define the encounter and event, his
introductions of the "Big Four" firms in town glossed
over significant historical divisions within this local
entrepreneurial class. In colonial reports on cigarette
manufacture, the category of 'trader' was fractured
along a racial code based on ethnic and religious origin:
firms owned by "Natives" and "Foreign Orientals"
were listed separately, where the latter term referred to
Netherlands Indies residents of Chinese descent (Castles
1967). Only in the tobacco and textile sectors were
"native" entrepreneurs, that is, Javanese Muslims, even
moderately successful in establishing markets in the
colonial economy. Throughout the Twentieth Century
the political influence of this nascent Javanese middle
class remained relatively weak compared with that of a
multinational and domestic "Chinese" business class
(Robison 1986.57-62). Yet by introducing the museum
patrons collectively as the "Big Four" in town, the
minister at this dedication ceremony in 1986 juxta-
posed a symbolic balance between two "Javanese"
firms and two "Chinese" firms. The historical divisions
and racial codes were rearticulated, yet muted under the
auspices of the postcolonial state.
It was not unusual for cigarette firm owners to act Figure 3. Visiting the museum with a friend,
as patrons of a state project. Since the 1970s large November 1987. Photo courtesy Astri Wright.
cigarette firms have frequently sponsored sports and

32 Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997 Visual Anthropology Review

 VISITING THE MUSEUM, IMAGINING THE PAST
Throughout 1987, the first year following the dedica-
tion of the Kudus Kretek Museum, museum visits
became a popular pasttime among Kudus residents.13
Most visitors were school children on field trips with
their teachers. Friends often urged me to accompany
them to the museum, which was far from the center of
town and required a short, but expensive, ride in a
pedicab. On a typical visit we would enter the front
door and a young male guard would ask us to sign a
guest book at the desk where he stood casually chatting
with another guard. Some visitors removed their san-
dals upon entering as they did when entering a mosque
or a home.
The museum interior consisted of one large room,
cool and darkened at the edges. Exhibits along the sides
lay in the shadow cast by a brightly-lit chandelier
hanging in the center of the room. Many people audibly
admired the tiled floor, the glittering chandelier and the
luxurious woodwork, but most notably, the air condi-
tioning. "Cool air, great" ("Adhem, Iho, apit") they said
in Low Javanese. One teacher in her mid-twenties told
'A
Figure 4. A close-up of the diorama showing clove cigarette manufacture in the rural and
imagined past. Photo: G. G. Weix, 1987.
Visual Anthropology Review
me that the room resembled the reception area of a
wealthy trader family's home, that carefully radiated
social space in which a married couple receives guests
as well as clients, customers, and employees. S i mi 1 arly,
another rural schoolteacher remarked that the tiled
floors were slippery like the marble floors of an elite
trader's home. "The room is so comfortable," she told
me, "I could imagine staying here a long time." Several
other museum-goers said they felt sleepy during visit-
ing hours because the museum was so quiet.
When visitors proceeded to tour the circumference
of the room the guards directed them to view photo-
graphs and dioramas of factory workshops built in th
1910s. Wooden tools and documents lay in glass cases
near the photographs. The guards explained that these
items were "very fine" ("sae, antik." Thefirstis the
high Javanese term for 'good' and the second, the
English loan word for antique.) The evaluation of
'antique' has no necessary connection to age, since I
have heard Indonesians refer to recent objects, new
skyscrapers in Jakarta for example, or the latest f
ionable clothing, as antik. Antik signifies quality, not
antiquity.14
Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997 33
 The first generation of clove cigarette entrepre-
neurs is portrayed on a panelled wall of photographs:
nine men's portraits surround a larger photo of
Nitisemito, the best-known native entrepreneur of his
day. The caption beneath the photos simply lists each
founder's name with the collective rubric, "Cigarette
Kings." As with the other images in the exhibit, these
photographs represent a generic deference to present
elites and highlight the links of patronage between the
local firms and residents of ordinary means.
These photographs also recall the paintings of these
founders which hang in the front rooms of their children's
homes, as well as in their factory offices. In addition to
portraits in the home and workplace, some firm owners
honor their parents with prayer readings at the family
Figure 5. A close-up of the diorama showing hand-rolled and mechanized clove
cigarette manufacture in contemporary factories. Photo: G. G. Weix, 1987.
tomb every thirty-five days, on the dates of their par-
ents deaths according to the Javanese calendar. Indo-
nesians of Chinese descent in Kudus represent genealo-
gies vertically by generation with photographs hanging
in their front halls. In both instances, entrepreneurs
mark spaces of everyday life to show respect for the
previous generations. Only the Kudus Kretek Museum
creates a public, unitary set of images of these founders
in tlv simulated space of an elite home. Considering the
34 Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997
historic tensions within the entrepreneurial class por-
trayed, and the disparity of meanings for industry in
colonial and postcolonialeras, this symbolic consolida-
tion of respect is not easily accomplished in a single
institution.
As visitors trace the exhibits, the photographs and
display of obsolete tools are interspersed with dioramas
portraying successive eras of cigarette production. The
first diorama shows the manufacture of klobot, a coarse
variety of handrolled cigarettes wrapped in corn husks.
Their assembly is portrayed in a village setting reminis-
cent of highland communities on the mountain slopes
north of Kudus. All stages of production are depicted
in the diorama: harvesting the corn husks, picking,
drying, curing and rolling the tobacco leaves, mixing
the clove sauce to spray on the tobacco, and filling the
corn husk squares by hand to produce the flared ciga-
rette sold in rural markets. This sequence of agrarian
tasks in a single visual field of shared and simultaneous
labor sets up a similar synchronization for industrial
labor in subsequent panels. Such scenes of collective
activity recall preparations for life-cycle exchanges and
rituals in village communities, but the visual effect
presents coordinated tasks as rural, traditional, and
prior to industry.
Visual Anthropology Review
 What is most striking is that these scenes of the
early development of cigarette production are imagi-
nary, since many of the stages of manufacture por-
trayedsuch as growing tobacconever occurred
along the north coast. Tobacco isn't harvested in the
region, and clove trees have only been planted in the last
thirty years. Firms typically import their supplies of
tobacco from East Java and buy cloves from Zanzibar
through government brokers (Castles 1967). Early
manufacture of cigarettes was urban, and firms have
only moved production out to the villages in the last
forty years.
Juxtaposed with the dioramas are statues of work-
ers posed in the center of the room. Onegilded, life-size
statue is of a woman kneeling with a shallow basket tray
propped on her lap as she trims cigarettes. Another
statue of a male street seller is seated next to an open
market stall. These statues contrast women, who pro-
duce cigarettes, with men, who market and consume the
popular commodity.
The next wall shows a diorama of assembly-line
mechanized production, and photographs of the factory
entrance gates for the four largest firms. Captions cite
automation and production levels for 1985. One cap-
tion notes that due to competition and secrecy surround-
ing installation of new machinery, photographs of the
actual factory setting are not allowed. Visitors to the
museum are invited to take guided tours of the indi-
vidual firms, an option for the few foreign tourists who
visit Kudus. A final, free-standing wall combines
charts and graphs of annual production and financial
information on the entire cigarette industry in Kudus
and other towns in East Java.
Javanese visitors remark especially on items dis-
played in a set of glass cabinets along the back walls of
the room. These cases hold various household wares,
mostly tea cups and plates stamped with company
logos, awarded as prizes (hadiah) to customers who
bought specific brands of cigarettes at all-night fairs.
Introduced in 1928 by the famous Kudus entrepreneur,
Nitisemito, to promote his brand, Bal Tiga, these prize
paraphernalia advertised the Bal Tiga insignia through
the use of domestic commodities. Promotions entered
the airwaves in 1938 when Nitisemito's son, Akoewan,
announced that Bal Tiga would be the primary sponsor
for a radio station, Radio Omroep Vereeniging. An
elderly man recalled that Bal Tiga had hired aircraft to
drop flyers announcing the radio station over an all-
Visual Anthropology Review
night market. Both prizes and radio broadcasts proved
to be effective marketing strategies and other firms
began to offer a variety of items as prizes both to loyal
customers and to their market distributors. By the
1960s, according to one distributor in Surakarta, ciga-
rette packages held lottery coupons for large prizes such
as washing machines.
The grandchildren of Nitisemito and other firm
owners have kept a few of the prizes once handed out to
customers as mementos. They described them jokingly
as their private collections (koleksi), or even more drily,
as inheritance (warisan), since several families lost
their fortunes after World War n. The objects on
display at the museum, visitors assured me, were only
a glimpse of much finer private collections, since the
relatives of these original founders were unwilling to
relinquish their mementos for public display. Indeed,
one afternoon Nitisemito's granddaughter showed me
her 'personal museum' (museum pribadi): a glass cabi-
net filled with tea cups and matchbox cases bearing the
Bal Tiga logo, as well as her grandfather's pipe and
reading glasses.
Distribution of prizes in the colonial and post-
Independence eras served to advertise cigarette brands
and to develop markets of steady clientele. The exhibits
at the Kudus Kretek museum disrupt this economic
function by displaying these household commodities
themselves, converting promotional objects into signs
of past wealth and status. What were once public prizes
given to ordinary customers to promote the name of a
firm are now displayed to create a different effect, that
of valuables on display in the glass cabinets found in the
living rooms of the elites.
In a similar manner, current firm owners display
souvenirs from international travels and gifts from
European acquaintances in glass curio cabinets at home.
When neighbors, clients, or employees visit elites to
ask for assistance, these current firm owners become
the central nodes of extensive networks of patronage,
both formal and informal. The Kudus Kretek museum
resembles elite homes, and the curio effect of the
museum contributes to the simulation of that particular
domestic social space. Thus, promotional items en-
cased behind glass do more than recall the marketing
strategies of the past. They transpose onto the museum
the ambiance of elite homes, and recall the practice of
visiting (sowan in High Javanese) that establishes and
reproduces local patrons' prestige.
Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997 35
 If the interior design of the Kudus Kretek Museum the ambiance of the museum itself. The interior de-
alone were not sufficient to simulate and to recall elite signits lighting and infrastructureand the every-
traders' homes, the museum project goes one step day practices of visiting all reenact a domestic setting in
further. An entire house itself, one of the intricately which museum visitors enact being guests in elite
carved teakwood traditional houses {rumah adai) of homes. Through this recreation and privileging of
West Kudus, was disassembled and transported to the interior private spaces, local elites maintain and extend
museum for display. It stands next to the main building their privileged position in a social hierarchy where
with a small faux plaster well built in front of it. Only their patronage remains visible to all.
the high brick walls which enclose West Kudus homes
and keep them from public view are absent. In its THE MUSEUMIZING IMAGINATION
former neighborhood, the elaborate teakwood home
would have been known only shielded from casual Private museums such as the Kudus Kretek Museum
sight; on the museum grounds, it constitutes an imper- built in Indonesia in the last decade signal material and
sonal object of display. According to the curator, local visual means of representing the postcolonial past that
visitors consider the locked and inaccessible house to evoke the present moment. They present artifacts of
be haunted. commerce as exemplars of modernity. Although these
Kudus residents identify this teakwood house not artifacts are arranged according to a model of historical
with its previous owner, but with P.T. Djarum, the development, their cultural significance lies in rein-
company that purchased it. They cited the purchase forcing contemporary social relations. Indonesians
price (US $ 150,000) as proof of the enormous wealth of may design these private museums as institutions of
cigarette manufac- memory, but
turers in general. through museum-
Only a company such goers' viewing prac-
as P.T. Djarum, they tices and commen-
reasoned, could af- tary, they experience
ford to buy an entire them as simulacra of
teakwood traditional present hierarchies.
house and donate it Private museums
for display. thus substitute a
Thus, the mu- simulation of
seum generalizes present social order
veneration to the for the past. Exhib-
dead through simu- its shaped by local
lation within the ex- interests and sys-
hibit hall, and signals tems of prestige, in
contemporary pa- turn, dialectically
tronage throughout sustain them.
the grounds. Mu- Figure 6. The interior sitting area of an elite home in Kudus, with While many
seum-goers comment the back wall used for display and storage of gifts, mementos, and museums constitute
most frequently on souvenirs. Photo courtesy of Astri Wright, 1987. the role of spectator
the museum's spatial as witness to (and
character and the ways the central room consolidates all exhibits of) the past, Indonesian private museums pro-
its images in a single field to display differences of vide ways in which visitors can admire and show
wealth in Kudus communities, rather than development deference to contemporary elites. When visitors are
over time. Its exhibits transform signs of advertising encouraged to engage with the objects on display, they
into curio cabinet mementos and shift the activity from inhabit a role in relation to the exhibit (Yamaguchi
circulation of economic goods to the public display of 1991:58). In a setting which resembles a home, a
wealth. Prizes become prized for their contribution to Javanese museum-goer to the Kudus Kretek Museum is

36 Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997 Visual Anthropology Review

inclined to act respectful and deferential to a host, a
patron, a founder who is no longer there. Ivan Karp
describes this practice as a 'museum effect' and as a set
of possibilities:"... (A)udiences are left with two choices,
either they define their experience of the exhibition to fit
with their existing categories of knowledge, or they
reorganize their categories to fit better with their expe-
rience (of the museum)" (1991:22).
To broaden our analysis of visual culture, we can
ask how museums visualize the tenor of present mo-
ments, and convey comparative perspectives on 'time'
itself, especially forms of sociality and relations of
power and authority. Javanese visitors' responses
broaden our understanding of the 'museum effect' as an
apparatus of power acting upon the audience. Paradoxi-
cally, if we accompany residents on tour of their
postcolonial museums, they may show us that the na-
tional politics of representation are secondary to aes-
thetic and social concerns of a different, and more local,
order.
NOTES
1. Clove cigarettes are unique to Indonesia and famous
for their spicy, pungent taste and scent. Mass produc-
tion begun in 1909 in enclaves of capitalist industry
organized and managed by native Indies residents under
Dutch colonial rule. The industry was dominated by
both Javanese Muslims and Indonesians of Chinese
descent, who have experienced numerous boom and
bust cycles in this century (Castlesl967; Weix n.d.).
2. 'New Order' describes the Indonesian state since an
attempted coup October 1, 1965 during which then
President Sukarno was kidnapped, never to regain con-
trol of the government. In 1966 he ceded permanent
command of the military to General Suharto, who has
ruled by election since 1971.
3. Since 1986 President Suharto has dedicated no less
than six museums to modern state history, including
several to separate branches of the military as well as the
"Museum to the Patriots of the Indonesian Revolution
(1945-1949)," the "Museum to the Extreme Right" and
the "Museum to the Extreme Left." The latter features
simulated scenes which narrate the events of the at-
tempted coup of October 1,1965 and the murders of six
generals at the "Crocodile Pit" south of Jakarta. The
dioramas and simulated scenes serve as constant peda-
gogical devices for the approximately 350,000 school
children who tour that exhibit annually (Cohen 1991:20-
21).
Visual Anthropology Review
4. Pemberton also cites the artificial quality of "home"
the exhibits are said to evoke for visitors who recognize
their origins in Yogya, or in New Guinea, when they
enter those regional buildings (1994: 158-159). As we
will see in the case of private museums, the simulation
is not of 'returning home,' but of visiting an elite home
and remaining a guest.
5. When I toured the Ternate museum in 1991, the civil
servant acting as our tour guide told me, "...[T]he
purpose of the museum is to bring more people to visit
Ternate. We can't let tourists take the exhibit home in
a photograph."
6. The Potential of Cultural and Natural Tourism in
Kudus, published by the provincial government office
cites the aim "...[T]o increase the efforts in the field of
tourism, to raise the foreign exchange and expand the
opportunities for employment as well as to introduce
and preserve Indonesian culture..." (Riandono 1985:i).
It describes the Kudus Kretek Museum as part of this
effort (ibid.: 21).
7. Macdonald (1996) discusses local appropriation
where "...the usual format of the museum has been
partly reshaped through local notions of the past and of
material culture" (p. 2). In the case of the Kudus Kretek
Museum, the exhibits are shaped by a local aesthetics of
the present social order.
8. Residents told me that both the tower and the
museum captured "the unique character of Kudus (ciri
khas Kudus)."
9. I attended the ceremony at the request of my host, a
wealthy entrepreneur and cigarette firm owner, whose
brother was one of the museum's patrons.
10. Parada Harahap (1952) coined this phrase in his
journalist's sketch of Kudus entrepreneurs in his book,
IndonesianSekarang (Contemporary Indonesia).
11. Urry (1996) speculates that there are spatial prac-
tices of memory where reminiscence is theorized as
"...a concentrated, and not distracted viewing of all
kinds of objects and performances" (ibid.: 54-55).
These practices are intrinsically plural: "...even the
most apparently unambiguous of museum or heritage
centers will be 'read' in different ways by different
visitors" (ibid.). Cf. Macdonald (1995:21).
12. In 1938, Sultan Sri Sesuhanan Paku Buwono X and
his entourage traveled from his court at Surakarta to
visit the nine Islamic wali ("saints") along the north
coast of Java. When they visited the tomb of Sunan
Kudus, they were hosted by Nitisemito, the most well-
Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997 37
known Javanese entrepreneur and founder of the Bal Certeau, Michel de
Tiga firm. In the same year Haji Moeslich, another 1984 The Practice ofEveryday Life. Berkeley: Univer-
entrepreneur whose firm was located in the West Kudus sity of California Press.
quarters near the tomb of Sunan Kudus, hosted the Cohen, Margot
Dutch Governor, General Tjarda Van Strakenburd 1991 The Red Menace Is Preserved and Well in Java,
(Salam 1983: 27). Asian Wall St. Journal, December: 11: 20-21.
13. Fyfe and Ross (1996) suggest "...museum visiting Duncan, Carol
is a social practice which varies between groups in 1991 Art Museums and the Ritual of Citizenship, In
terms of their underlying dispositions to look" (133). Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of
They also hypothesize that visiting museums is one Museum Display. Ivan Karp and Steven D. Levine
strategy to accumulate cultural capital, a strategy which eds., pp. 88-103. Washington: Smithsonian.
would vary by class (ibid.: 148). Fyfe, Gordon and Max Ross
14. Pemberton (1995) notes that the Indonesian Mu- 1996 Decoding the Visitor's Gaze: Rethinking Mu-
seum collection in Tanam Mini is all new. He quotes seum History, In Theorizing Museums: Represent-
Mrs. Soeharto's response to a senior official: "We may ing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World,
call it a museum now because someday everything in it Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe, eds., pp. 127-
will be antique ["old"; the Javanese is kuna]". (ibid.: 169).
152. Oxford: Blackwell.
I would note that Mrs. Soeharto is credited with the Florida, Nancy
word kuna, not antik. In a sense, the collection is 1995 Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future: History
already antik, and will become kuna. as Prophecy in Colonial Java Durham: Duke Uni-
versity Press.
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38 Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997 Visual Anthropology Review

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Visual Anthropology Review Volume 13 Number 1 Spring 1997 39