Museum of Indonesian Arts Inc.
When a group of mainly returned volunteers to Indonesia, their often Indonesian spouses and academics, both students and teachers worried about what to do with the often exceptionally beautiful artefacts they had acquired in Indonesia, as it happened a group of Indonesian musicians was visiting Melbourne and Multicultural Arts Victoria was looking for somebody to decorate the venue. The job was given to the loose union that was to become the Museum of Indonesian Arts Inc who were delighted with the interest shown by both Indonesians and non Indonesians. Since we had a large number of ex teachers among us and were aware of the lack of generally available material for use with classes we drifted to setting up an educational institution: To acquire, document, curate, secure and display a wide range of objects and representations of arts from across the Indonesian Archipelago in order to promote the diversity of cultures as expressed through textiles, sculptures, weapons, literature, music, dance and spiritual and customary objects and peortrayals. Right from the beginning we were determined that whatever we offered, through exhibitions, workshops and the holdings people started donating to us would be available to whoever was genuinely interested at no cost to them. Since our official establishment in 2012 we have averaged two exhibitions a year, usually in local government owned premises for which we usually were given a grant and two or three workshops to widen the understanding of what the exhibition is aiming to present. We always serve Indonesian food and have a cultural performance to make the experience as enriching as possible. As well, our members, particularly those with extensive personal collections or the good fortune to be able to travel in Indonesia, make their premises available to all interested, several times a year. Our neighbours are important to us and millions of Australians over the years have visited the fascinating country we are blessed to be close to. To raise funds we hold small raffles of donated goods and silent auctions as well as charging a small membership fee. our aim is basically to educate about our close neighbour and to us education should not carry a monetary cost.