A J The­o­lade

Most cities have mu­se­ums where the coun­try's na­tion­al arte­facts are put on dis­plays. Some mu­se­ums are in­ter­na­tion­al­ly fa­mous like the British Mu­se­um in Lon­don where vis­i­tors can see King Tut tomb, Mo­ma in New York, known for its quirky ex­hi­bi­tions or the Lou­vre in Paris where thou­sands flock every day to see La Jo­conde, bet­ter known as the Mona Lisa.

Mu­se­um Day was on May 18 and the In­ter­na­tion­al Coun­cil of Mu­se­ums (Icom) and 30,000 mu­se­ums in 120 coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T, de­vot­ed a month to cel­e­brat­ing mu­se­ums and their role in so­ci­ety.

In T&T, five of the coun­try's more pop­u­lar mu­se­ums saw an in­crease in foot­fall as the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion en­cour­aged the pub­lic to vis­it the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and Art Gallery of T&T in Port-of-Spain, An­gos­tu­ra Mu­se­um and Bar­cant But­ter­fly Col­lec­tion in Laven­tille, Cen­tral Bank Mu­se­um in Port-of-Spain, UWI's Zo­ol­o­gy Mu­se­um on their St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus and the To­ba­go Mu­se­um lo­cat­ed at Fort King George, Scar­bor­ough Hill, To­ba­go.

Mu­se­um col­lec­tions make con­nec­tions

Mu­se­um col­lec­tions make con­nec­tions was the theme for Mu­se­um Day this year and Icom says, "This theme re­minds us that mu­se­ums are liv­ing in­sti­tu­tions that help cre­ate bonds be­tween vis­i­tors, gen­er­a­tions and cul­tures around the world."

Lo­cal­ly the theme has been in­ter­pret­ed as an op­por­tu­ni­ty "to de­code iden­ti­ty" and the min­istry's dou­ble page news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment urges that the pub­lic use it to "re­al­ly un­der­stand our coun­try, our en­vi­ron­ment, econ­o­my, gov­ern­ment, his­to­ry."

"Our col­lec­tions make con­nec­tions," said Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion min­is­ter, Dr Rodger Samuel. "They con­nect us to our past, to our fel­low cit­i­zens, to our fu­ture, and to our 'Trin­ba­go' home."

A tour guide at the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um ex­plains that the sim­ple ex­hi­bi­tion–a col­lec­tion of shells, some Caz­abon paint­ings, the first An­gos­tu­ra pun­cheon, mon­ey dis­play boards, and a small "in­ter­ac­tive" in­stal­la­tion of a 1940's liv­ing room with two rock­ing chairs, a cof­fee ta­ble and a gramo­phone–is re­al­ly de­signed to en­cour­age vis­i­tors to go the mu­se­ums the pieces came from. The pieces were cho­sen be­cause the pub­lic could eas­i­ly con­nect to ob­jects like shells, mon­ey and the places paint­ed by Caz­abon in the 1800s, de­spite their un­easy jux­ta­po­si­tion.

In coun­tries like Bar­ba­dos, In­ter­na­tion­al Mu­se­um Day ac­tiv­i­ties in­clud­ed among its mu­se­um day tours and pub­lic talks, the launch of the Na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion's dig­i­tal data­base com­pris­ing clips of Bar­ba­di­an writer, crit­ic and thinker George Lam­ming and var­i­ous dig­i­tal oral his­to­ry projects cov­er­ing the sto­ries of Bar­ba­dos. There was al­so an open day at the Crick­et Leg­ends of Bar­ba­dos Mu­se­um dur­ing which var­i­ous crick­et leg­ends signed pho­tographs and mem­o­ra­bil­ia and there was a film screen­ing of Fire in Bably­on, which shows the strug­gle of the young West In­dies crick­eters.

The dig­i­tal con­nec­tion

At a time when mu­se­um cu­ra­tors around the world are con­sid­er­ing how to make ex­hibits more vivid and in­ter­ac­tive us­ing every­thing from lap­tops to mo­bile phones, many in­ter­na­tion­al mu­se­ums used this year's IMD theme to high­light how they are mak­ing their col­lec­tions more dig­i­tal­ly con­nect­ed.

"Mu­se­ums are be­com­ing vir­tu­al," says lo­cal his­to­ri­an Ger­ard Besson. Besson through his com­pa­ny, Paria Pub­lish­ing, was in­stru­men­tal in the cre­ation of the An­gos­tu­ra Mu­se­um, the Mu­se­um at the Pitch Lake, La Brea, The Mu­se­um of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and the Mu­se­um of the city of Port-of-Spain.

Besson is a self-mo­ti­vat­ed his­to­ri­an whose own re­search, apart from spawn­ing a num­ber of book ti­tles, has be­come a blog and a part vir­tu­al mu­se­um. "Peo­ple have got in touch with me from all over the world," he says, "in two years, the site has had over 280,000 vis­i­tors."

The pow­er of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to con­nect and in­ter­act with au­di­ences has al­so been ob­vi­ous for cu­ra­tor of the Vir­tu­al Mu­se­um of T&T, An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh. "A phys­i­cal mu­se­um is lim­it­ed," says Bisses­sars­ingh, who ex­plains that he was at­tract­ed to Face­book be­cause of its "un­lim­it­ed pho­to up­loads and re­al-time so­cial in­ter­ac­tion." Bisses­sars­ingh took the de­ci­sion to go vir­tu­al be­cause he want­ed to share his col­lec­tion but didn't want to do­nate it as he was "fear­ful of loss."

It has tak­en him five years to up­load his pri­vate col­lec­tions of rare books, doc­u­ments, pho­tographs, and post­cards, and dur­ing this time he has made friends with a re­searcher based at the Ross Is­land sta­tion in An­tar­ti­ca and been con­tact­ed by one the last La­m­onts, whose fam­i­ly once owned the Palmiste Sug­ar Es­tate in San Fer­nan­do, and who sent him prints of the fam­i­ly pho­to al­bum from Scot­land. "The Vir­tu­al Mu­se­um en­com­pass­es sev­er­al thou­sand users," says Bisses­sars­ingh.

The love con­nec­tion

An­na Wal­cott-Hardy, daugh­ter of No­bel lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott says that her fam­i­ly was al­so in­spired to share their col­lec­tion, which in­cludes paint­ings by her grand­fa­ther War­wick Wal­cott, sketch­es by Derek Wal­cott and the work of lo­cal artists like Jack­ie Hink­son, Boscoe Hold­er and Cindy Arthur.

"Our art is as good as any­thing else," says Wal­cott-Hardy, "we are among the most cre­ative peo­ple in the world." De­scrib­ing her child­hood home as a place "with art, where every­one was paint­ing," Wal­cott-Hardy who stud­ied art his­to­ry, ge­og­ra­phy and lit­er­a­ture at Boston Uni­ver­si­ty says that while she doesn't con­sid­er her­self wide­ly trav­elled, her vis­its to mu­se­ums in places like Lon­don, New York, Madrid and Barcelona have helped to re­in­force her love of art.

"But when I go in­to the Mu­se­um in Trinidad," says Wal­cott-Hardy, "I get very up­set and sad be­cause I have been able to go to the Pra­do in Spain which I love and go to mu­se­ums in a few coun­tries...and I see how chil­dren can take their lit­tle sketch pad and sit on the floor and they're sur­round­ed by these great painters and I just find that our mu­se­um is a mix­ture of an an­cient pe­tro­le­um ex­hib­it, some pieces that peo­ple do­nate that aren't re­al­ly cu­rat­ed...I mean I know things may have changed, I haven't been in a while so I don't want to bad talk some­thing, but there's not the re­spect that needs to be giv­en for mu­se­ums which re­al­ly help us to learn about our­selves and have a lot of re­spect for our­selves."

This sen­ti­ment is shared by Medul­la Gallery di­rec­tor and cu­ra­tor Ge­of­frey Mac­Clean, who con­tends that her­itage has nev­er been re­spect­ed in Trinidad.

"Our mu­se­ums I don't think have ever been tak­en se­ri­ous­ly," says Mac­Clean, "I mean like when four Caz­abon paint­ings can be stolen ..." Mac­Clean who was once the on­ly art stu­dent at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, mus­es on the pace of change as re­gards at­ti­tudes to­wards mu­se­ums and art.

"One of the things I re­alised (as a stu­dent) was that there was noth­ing on Trinidad art," he says, "32 years lat­er when my son was at Fa­ti­ma do­ing art, I re­alised that there was still noth­ing, and this is when I de­cid­ed look let me start the ball rolling." He did the re­search and wrote three books on 19th-cen­tu­ry Trinida­di­an painter Michel-Jean Caz­abon who was the is­land's first in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned artist.

A pri­vate con­nec­tion

Many of the new lo­cal mu­se­ums are be­ing in­sti­gat­ed by pri­vate col­lec­tors like Besson, Mac­Clean and Bisses­sars­ingh, who have a per­son­al pas­sion for every­thing from fine art to cars.

An­oth­er ex­am­ple is the Brij Ma­haraj Au­toma­tive Mu­se­um and Her­itage Col­lec­tion, a show­case of vin­tage cars owned by San Fer­nan­do busi­ness­man Brij Ma­haraj, who has been col­lect­ing cars for over 40 years. His col­lec­tion in­cludes the coun­try's old­est work­ing car, a 1917-18 Mod­el T Ford."Au­toma­tive his­to­ry is im­por­tant to un­der­stand­ing a coun­try," says Bisses­sars­ingh, who has part­nered with Ma­haraj to in­crease aware­ness of the mu­se­um, "the mu­se­um rais­es aware­ness of an im­por­tant part of his­to­ry that will go over­looked. Peo­ple have vin­tage heir­looms that they don't ap­pre­ci­ate."

Bisses­sars­ingh ex­plains that he saw one of these heir­looms in Pe­nal, "a su­per car that set the par­a­digm for oth­er cars" with its pow­er­ful V8 en­gine and hand­craft­ed body and parts. "This was a car for roy­al­ty," says Bisses­sars­ingh of the Jensen car hand­craft­ed in the UK, "... but the own­er had cut off the back and the front and re­placed them with Japan­ese parts and a Japan­ese en­gine. I was so mad I couldn't say any­thing." And there have been oth­ers he has dis­cov­ered dur­ing his search like the 1950s Jaguar that sat un­der a man­go tree and rot­ted, un­til it was on­ly a shell.

Bisses­sars­ingh, who al­so re­cent­ly wrote about the theft of the Caz­abon paint­ings says, " we lose things in stu­pid ways." There was the pho­to al­bum which showed the evo­lu­tion of the bus ser­vice that was sim­ply thrown away and ac­cord­ing to Bisses­sars­ingh, there is al­so es­ca­lat­ed degra­da­tion of her­itage sites. "Every­day a her­itage build­ing is bro­ken down," he says, "there is so lit­tle left." "When you re­mem­ber the strug­gles of your an­ces­tors," says Bisses­sars­ingh, "it in­creas­es pride in your coun­try and crime de­creas­es. Every com­mu­ni­ty should have a her­itage cen­tre."

Cu­ra­tors make the first con­nec­tions

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Besson who de­scribes "the his­tor­i­cal record here in Trinidad" as "ten­u­ous," can tes­ti­fy to the lack of lo­cal aware­ness that can lead to loss. He speaks of staff at mu­se­ums keep­ing their lunch­es in dis­play cab­i­nets, the dis­cov­ery of the in­stru­ments played at In­de­pen­dence sealed be­hind a wall when do­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice Mu­se­um, and how in part, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do the Mu­se­um at the Pitch Lake emerged be­cause af­ter ren­o­va­tion of the orig­i­nal build­ing, it was dis­cov­ered that its orig­i­nal col­lec­tion had again sim­ply been thrown away.

The bro­ken pot­tery, shells and ar­ti­facts from the Pre-Colom­bian pe­ri­od once housed near the Pitch Lake, had been mis­judged as rub­bish. But says Besson, this was al­so one of the rea­sons that do­ing the An­gos­tu­ra Mu­se­um was so ex­cit­ing."

It was very in­ter­est­ing to do," says Besson, "they had kept a lot of their archival ma­te­r­i­al and this brought knowl­edge to the fore...there was enough there to es­tab­lish a lega­cy." Besson did a num­ber of ex­hi­bi­tions at the An­gos­tu­ra mu­se­um in­clud­ing Spir­its of Trinidad, Spir­its of Tra­di­tion and The Di­vine Child or Spir­its of Christ­mas. The cre­ativ­i­ty that was pos­si­ble from hav­ing enough ma­te­r­i­al to draw from, says a lot about the im­por­tance of know­ing what archival ma­te­r­i­al to keep but al­so the im­por­tance of know­ing how to in­ter­pret that ma­te­r­i­al and make it rel­e­vant for au­di­ences.

"Mu­se­ums are ten per cent dis­play and 90 per cent stor­age," says Besson, "and the idea is to mount ex­hi­bi­tions based on rea­sons." "His­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives are writ­ten by the vic­tors of his­to­ry," says Besson, but mu­se­ums give the his­tor­i­cal un­der­dog the op­por­tu­ni­ty to "un­der­stand the true na­ture of the past" and re­alise that "the hu­man con­di­tion is such that is a mix of good and mad."

An­na Wal­cott-Hardy al­so thinks that more ro­bust cu­ra­tion could be­gin to al­ter how the pub­lic views their na­tion­al mu­se­ums and work to im­prove un­der­stand­ing of key so­ci­etal is­sues. "The Na­tion­al His­to­ry Mu­se­um in New York has re­al spec­i­mens to show evo­lu­tion," says Wal­cott-Hardy, "and this will help to end racism."

Mak­ing her own case for the use of new tech­nolo­gies, Wal­cott-Hardy says that she vis­it­ed the mu­se­um with her daugh­ter and they were able to do their own tour with an iPod. "We could that here," she says plain­tive­ly. She al­so en­cour­ages that films and books be con­sid­ered great re­cep­ta­cles of his­to­ry.

Wal­cott-Hardy who pri­mar­i­ly pre­serves art, not on­ly on the walls of her home, but in the pub­li­ca­tions she pro­duces–UWI's STAN mag­a­zine and in col­lectible books and cal­en­dars for cor­po­rate clients, for which she has won awards - is con­sid­er­ing the pur­suit of a Mas­ters de­gree in Cu­ra­tion. "Cu­rate our build­ings," she says, "...you could just keep a fa­cade as an as­pect of his­to­ry. Clean out the mu­se­um and de­cide this is what you want to show. It needs to be well-cu­rat­ed, giv­en a fo­cus and stan­dards."