An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

The con­tro­ver­sy which sur­round­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the theft of two Caz­abon paint­ings from the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um last year on­ly served to high­light the ex­tent to which mis­man­age­ment and ne­glect have af­fect­ed the na­tion's fore­most repos­i­to­ry of her­itage ma­te­ri­als.

Stuffed birds, rep­tiles, shells

The mu­se­um owes its gen­e­sis to a col­lec­tion of odd­i­ties dis­played at the Red House which at­tract­ed the cu­rios­i­ty of many, in­clud­ing JH Col­lens, who wrote in 1887:"Here are filed copies of every news­pa­per pub­lished in the is­land. At the low­er end of the room are some cas­es of stuffed na­tive birds, pre­sent­ed to the colony by the late Dr Leo­taud, whose Or­nithol­o­gy of Trinidad is a stan­dard work. The in­ter­est­ing col­lec­tion of rep­tiles was giv­en by the late Dr Court, and in the cab­i­net will be found a re­al­ly valu­able though lit­tle ap­pre­ci­at­ed as­sort­ment of shells, the gift of the wid­ow of the late Gov­er­nor Keate. There is, in fact, the nu­cle­us of a good lo­cal mu­se­um; what a pity more is not made of it! The shells should be arranged by some com­pe­tent per­son, Mr JL Gup­py, for in­stance, who is an au­thor­i­ty on such mat­ters, and placed in glass cas­es where they could be seen with­out be­ing han­dled.

"It is well known that col­lec­tors of cu­riosi­ties have few scru­ples of con­science, and if this lot of shells does not be­come small­er by de­grees and beau­ti­ful­ly less, I shall be agree­ably sur­prised. The bot­tles of snakes and oth­er rep­tiles should be la­belled; spec­i­mens of the huge ana­con­da and rat­tlesnake, etc, might be added."It would be no dif­fi­cult task to ob­tain in a very few weeks whole cas­es full of but­ter­flies, bee­tles, etc. With all these prop­er­ly arranged, clas­si­fied and dis­played to the best ad­van­tage, the colony would be able to boast in a short time of a very cred­itable mu­se­um. British Guiana has one–why not Trinidad?"The at­trac­tion of these dis­plays was enough to gal­vanise the Gov­er­nor in­to ac­tion, as Col­lens al­so re­count­ed:"Since the above lines were penned, Sir Wm Robin­son has tak­en the ini­tia­tive in the mat­ter, and has start­ed a move­ment to es­tab­lish, in com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Queen's Ju­bilee, a Vic­to­ria In­sti­tute, to com­bine with­in it­self the Sci­en­tif­ic As­so­ci­a­tion, the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety, the Pub­lic Li­brary, and a Mu­se­um, and it will con­tain a large hall suit­able for lec­tures, con­ver­saziones, con­certs, meet­ings, and ex­hi­bi­tions. The idea is a mag­nif­i­cent one, and is thor­ough­ly wor­thy of the sup­port of all who have the wel­fare of the colony at heart."A cen­tral com­mit­tee has been ap­point­ed, with the Hon SH Gat­ty, At­tor­ney-Gen­er­al, at its head, and al­ready a very fair amount has been sub­scribed to­wards an in­sti­tu­tion which, as the Gov­er­nor very per­ti­nent­ly re­marks, 'if es­tab­lished and prop­er­ly man­aged, can­not fail to be of per­ma­nent ben­e­fit to present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions in this her Majesty's colony of Trinidad.'"

Open­ing in 1892

On Sep­tem­ber 17, 1892, the Roy­al Vic­to­ria In­sti­tute was for­mal­ly opened by the Sur­vey­or Gen­er­al, Sylvester M De­venish, on be­half of Sir F Napi­er Broome, the Gov­er­nor, who was ill. Not on­ly did the RVI serve as a mu­se­um, but it was al­so a civic and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.The or­nate ed­i­fice en­com­passed all the func­tions it was de­signed for, and es­pe­cial­ly the mu­se­um which housed the afore­men­tioned col­lec­tions, and sev­er­al oth­er price­less arte­facts in­clud­ing a port­fo­lio of 17th-cen­tu­ry doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to Span­ish Trinidad, loaned by the Por­tel fam­i­ly of St Joseph.

In 1913, the King Ed­ward VII Memo­r­i­al Wing was added, along with the Marie Louise Hall, which was opened by its name­sake, Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Hol­stein, grand­daugh­ter of Queen Vic­to­ria.

1920 fire

On April 1, 1920, dis­as­ter struck when the build­ing was com­plete­ly gut­ted by fire, de­stroy­ing many ir­re­place­able items. Wit­ness­es told of hear­ing the al­co­hol-filled jars of rep­tile spec­i­mens ex­plod­ing like mor­tar bombs. Al­so de­stroyed was a spec­i­men which was then con­sid­ered the world's largest cen­tipede, which had been caught on Cha­cachacare Is­land.The struc­ture was re­built and opened in June 1923, al­though it was many years be­fore enough of a col­lec­tion was as­sem­bled again to re­open the mu­se­um.Dur­ing WWII, class­es were held here in gar­ment con­struc­tion, car­pen­try and food prepa­ra­tion in or­der to teach peo­ple how to be more self-suf­fi­cient. Meet­ings of war-sup­port as­so­ci­a­tions were al­so held here.In 1958, the Fed­er­al Court of the ill-starred West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion (which would col­lapse three years lat­er) was con­vened in the Marie Louise Hall.Af­ter In­de­pen­dence in 1962, the Roy­al Vic­to­ria In­sti­tute was re-pur­posed as the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and Art Gallery.