The National Museum

The National museum, the offical name, is also known as the Gajah (elephant) museum, so no wonder some people are familiar with the Gajah museum. It is called Gajah museum because there is an elephant statue in the middle of the front yard of this museum. The statue that was made of the bronze was the gift given by the Thai King to the President of Indonesia, Ir. Soekarno. The museum is located on the western Lapangan Merdeka, exactly at Jalan Merdeka Barat, no.12, Central Jakarta. The museum considered the biggest museum in Southeast Asia was built by the Science Institution of Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen on April 24 1778 and it was first officially inaugurated in 1868 by the Art Union (Persatuan Kesenian) and the Batavia Science Institution.
The museum stores the stories of the Indonesian ancestors before the ancestors recognized either the writing in the pre-history era or other countries' civilizatons up to they became the strongest in the southeast Asia. The museum also stores some pre-history inheritances in the stone age, such as artifacts, fossils, menhir, and ancient weapons from all over Indonesia. The bronze-made ceramics from dynasty Han, Tan and Ming, and the Hindu-Java cultural inheritances are also available in this museum. Because of storing many ceramics, especially the southeast Asia Ceramics, the museum becomes the biggest ceramic collector in the world. Not only ceramics, the painting collections also become the interesting objects in this museum, some of which are the works of French painters. The painters are Kandensky, Zou Wuki,Georges Braque, Polk Lee. Their paintings were last exhibited in 1991.
Those paintings were granted by the French artists in 1950s because Indonesia wanted to build the International pure art museum. Unfortunately, the museum never comes true and consequently the French and Indonesian paintings were stored at this museum. Other additional buildings, on the left and behind the National museum, are being constructed.
On the left side is the six-storied building with two-floor basement, and behind the museum is the ten-storied building with two-floor basement. The head of the National museum, Suwati kartiwa said that the construction was to store all the collections because the old building was no longer afford to store them.
The museum now collects about 66.600 pieces consisting of 61.600 the pre-history and anthropology inheritances, and 5.000 archeology inheritances, all of which are from all over Indonesia. In the future, the museum, with its two new buildings, will have more space to both exhibit and store the collections - the ancient stone-made statues and the paintings. And with its two new buildings, the museum will have a 68.635 M2 space. 30 % of the width will function as the public area such as the lobby room and the auditorium and the rest will function as the exhibition rooms and the warehouses. The two-floor basement of the two buildings will function as the parking lots. As the museum is nationally and internationally famous, in the future the museum will be facilitated with cafés and souvenir shops in order that the visitors feel more comfortable. The museum opens:
Monday - Thursday: 08.30-14.30 WIB
Friday: 08.30-11.30 WIB
Saturday: 08.30-13.30 WIB
Sunday is closed

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