The Museum Almost Wasn't: Excavating The Myths And History Of The Early Sarawak Museum

 

The Museum almost wasn't: Excavating the myths and history of the early Sarawak Museum


 

THE SARAWAK MUSEUM JOURNAL
VOL LXXX NO.101 DECEMBER 2018
 
 
Title : 
The Museum almost Wasn’t: Excavating The Myths and History of The Early Sarawak Museum
Author : 
Gerrell M. Drawhorn
Abstract:
The conceptual origins of the Sarawak Museum in the 19th Century are replete with myths and legends. Despite the widespread acceptance in Museum brochures and articles since the Second World War, a review of the Brooke and Wallace letters and other contemporary documents indicate that Alfred Russel Wallace’s friendship with Rajah James Brooke and Rajah Charles Brooke was not a stimulus to the establishment of the Sarawak Museum. Rather the Museum was the product of a combination of factors. The Brooke’s attendance at the Great Exhibitions in London in 1851 and 1862 played a critical role, as did the promulgation of other local museums throughout Asia and Australia. Local collection and exhibition of particular items of prestige and supernatural power may have also played a part. Finally, the Museum faced a major crisis, instigated by curator J.E.A. Lewis, that almost constrained the Museum’s activities and expansion.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61507/smj22-2018-M3PP-01
How to cite:
Gerrell M. Drawhorn (2021). The Museum almost Wasn’t: Excavating The Myths and History of The Early Sarawak Museum.Sarawak Museum Journal, LXXX (101): 1-34 https://doi.org/10.61507/smj22-2018-M3PP-01
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