Lecture by Michael Isaac Cohen
Professor of International Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London
and Visiting Fellow, Yale University Art Gallery
Despite claims of its endangerment presented in its 2003 nomination to UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, wayang (Indonesian puppetry) remains very much a living and changing art in Western Indonesia, practiced in both traditional and modern, or post-traditional, forms. This talk assesses the role museums play in furthering the development of the art form in relation to their function of preserving the past or reifying dominant discourses about the tradition.
Dr. Cohen will discuss three cases in reference to this: the Raffles collection in the British Museum; the Chan family wayang collection in Simon Fraser University in Vancouver; a revival of the anti-colonial wayang Suluh at a Jakarta museum using replicas of puppets repatriated from the Netherlands; and Rumah Wayang 2, a small museum in Tegal curated by the politician, puppeteer, and Islamic preacher Ki Enthus Susmono.
This lecture is sponsored by the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, the Peabody Museum of Natural History, and Council on Southeast Asian Studies.