Founded in 1908, the National Taiwan Museum (NTM) is the oldest museum in Taiwan, featuring a collection of more than 120,000 items. Accumulated largely under Japanese rule in the first half of the 20th century, they came to the museum by way of donations from or exchanges with business, official or academic bodies.

After the Japanese withdrew at the end of World War II and the ROC government took control of Taiwan, it was evi­dent that a portion of the Southeast-Asian artifacts listed in the collection lacked information such as their origin, year of acquisition, or authorship.

Whenever Emily Hsu-wen Yuan, curator of A Centenary Dialog—When Transnational Migrants and Museum Collections Cross Paths, visited the museum storerooms, she couldn’t help but wish that she could introduce these items to the public.

In the 1990s, Southeast-Asian immigrants and migrant workers began coming to Taiwan, and in recent years their number has exceeded 1 million, so these relics—which had been waiting silently for a century in some cases—at last had an opportunity to be displayed.

Artifacts far from home

In 2015, the museum launched an international docent program that recruits immigrants from Southeast Asia to serve as museum guides. Additionally, multi­cultural activities are planned to implement cultural equality and accessibility.

Yuan, who is in charge of the program, said that since 2016 the Singo Barong Taiwan dance troupe, formed by Indonesian migrant workers, has performed Reog Ponorogo—a traditional dance in which the main dancer sports a lion-head mask topped by a peacock-feather headdress—at several Indonesian National Day cultural events co-organized by the museum.

She noticed that the dancers’ costumes and accessories were similar to some items in the museum’s collection. When she showed photos of them to a migrant worker, she hadn’t imagined the reaction. “Those things are from my hometown. That’s our culture!” In fact, the Indonesian government has applied to UNESCO to have Reog Ponorogo declared an intangible cultural asset.

This mask opened a channel of communication between the museum and Southeast-Asian immigrants, not only solving the mystery of the origins of items such as the asymmetrical kris (keris) daggers and the flat wooden shadow puppets once lying neglected in the museum storeroom, but also fostering a dialogue between the century-old Southeast Asian collection and Southeast Asians now living in Taiwan.

“Bali Barong”: This costume representing a panther-like deity, which stars in Bali’s Tari Barong dance, was donated to the National Taiwan Museum in 2019 by the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office in Taipei and is regarded as one of the most important items in the museum’s collection.

Emily Yuan, curator at the NTM, was inspired by Indonesian dance costumes to organize an exhibition that would enable Southeast-Asian immigrants to interact with the museum’s 100-year-old collection of artifacts from their homelands.

Unexpected help

“We searched high and low only to find help where we least expected!” said Yuan, brows raised in delight, referring to the felicitous link established between the museum collection and the immigrant community.

The museum and the curatorial team then began to reorganize and recatalog the Southeast Asian collection, while the immigrants helped to identify the items, and in the process, facilitated interaction and communication between the museum and overseas historians.

In addition, the NTM issued a call for Southeast Asian immigrants to lend items they had created or collected themselves to the museum for display. More than 70 items were selected for the exhibition, including Indonesian kris daggers, shadow puppets, batik items, tableware, and musical instruments used in gamelan (traditional Indonesian ensemble music), as well as Thai tableware, Philippine national attire and artifacts from Vietnam, transforming the exhibition into a conversation between past and present.

Pindy Windy, an Indonesian migrant worker, made these dough figurines of artisans in a traditional batik workshop.

Daggers evoke nostalgia

It was kris daggers that served to link the museum with the community in curating the exhibition. This tradi­tional Indonesian weapon is now also a symbolic ceremonial item, a ritual object, or a family heirloom.

“Seeing such a well-preserved Indonesian dagger reminds me of the tradition of having kris daggers among the elders of my homeland,” said Sri Handini, an Indonesian immigrant appearing in a documentary about the exhibition.

“In earlier times, when everyone carried a kris, gripping it would inspire confidence and ­determination, but nowadays it’s more of a family heirloom,” said Indonesian-­based collector Herry Saptono in a video call.

Ninik Wahyuni, a long-term immigrant from Indonesia, lent her lion-head mask coiffed in peacock feathers—featured in East Java’s Reog Ponorogo dance—to the museum for display. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

Century-old puppets

While examining the kris in their collection, they discovered that such daggers were also brandished by puppets in the museum’s collection. Upon inquiry, they learned that these wooden puppets were used in the wayang klitik, or shadow puppetry, of Kediri City on Java.

“This is the traditional performing art of my hometown. I grew up watching such performances—I’m so grateful that Taiwan is preserving Indonesian culture!” exclaimed Budi, a migrant worker from Kediri.

Budi contacted his neighbor in Indonesia, puppeteer Kondo Brodiyanto, who explained the occasion, timing, and cultural taboos of wayang performance to museum staff. Kondo also contacted a Kediri village chief and puppet troupe who livestreamed a classic puppet show, shot in front of the local police station.

Hundred-year-old wooden shadow puppets from Kediri, Indonesia.

Lion dances, daggers and puppets

The NTM also found that one puppet’s headdress resembled that worn by a dancer in a traditional drama. With the help of puppeteer Kondo, it was confirmed that the puppet portrays King Adhipati Klonosewandono, a descendant of the Ponorogo royal family. The link between the dancer, the museum collection and the legendary story was very touching to the museum staff.

According to the museum, both the protagonist of East Java’s Reog Ponorogo dance (represented by the lion-head coiffed in peacock feathers) and the panther-like Barong in Bali’s Tari Barong dance, are important deities in Indonesian religious culture. So the museum borrowed a lion-faced costume, normally used for teaching purposes, from Indonesian immigrant Ninik Wahyuni, together with a Bali ­Barong (donated by the Indonesian Economic and Trade Office in Taipei), and featured them both in the exhibition. One of the largest masks in the world, a genuine lion-head mask, or Singo Barong Ponorogo, weighs 60–70 kilograms, and the performer relies solely upon their teeth to hold it in place.

“Reog Ponorgo performances are nothing unusual to me back home,” commented Ninik, “but since I came to Taiwan, where there aren’t any, they seem more precious.”

Hanuman stick puppet: Protagonist in an Indonesian shadow-play based on the ancient Hindu epic Ramayana.

Philippine traditional attire

Also on display is a century-old set of Barong Tagalog clothes made of pineapple yarn. Embroidered with floral decorations, such costumes typically feature a pocketless shirt for men and a short-sleeved dress with a round or square collar for women. Since the sleeves of the women’s dress are puffed at the shoulders and resemble a butterfly spreading its wings, it has also been dubbed the “butterfly dress.” This style of dress was designated as the national costume by former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos in 1975.

Mario Subeldia, a Filipino sand painting artist and costume designer based in Taiwan, designed three modern versions of Philippine dress to be placed in the exhibit, complementing the traditional Philippine national costume in the museum collection.

Subeldia expressed surprise at seeing the national costume in the collection. Still in good condition, the garments take the visitor back in time. Since pineapple fiber is expensive and difficult to obtain nowadays, for his version he replaced it with synthetic fiber, but kept the traditional embroidered elements and patterns. He feels proud to be Filipino when the audience admires the beauty of the national costume and his work, he said.

Filipino sand painting artist and costume designer Mario Subeldia designed this dress with elements of the Philippine national costume, complementing the century-old dress from the museum’s collection that also appears in the exhibition.

Curating via the immigrant community

Yuan explained that the study of Southeast-Asian heritage has been one of the most significant areas of museum research worldwide in recent years, but this special exhibition “is a demonstration of the process of tracing the origins of the museum’s collection hand in hand with Taiwan’s Southeast-Asian community.”

Lin Wen-ling, assistant professor in the Graduate Institute of Museum Studies at Fu Jen Catholic University, pointed out that the General Conference of the International Council of Museums in Prague in 2022 established a new definition of museums that encourages them to be accessible and inclusive, and to foster diversity and community participation.

The involvement of the Southeast-Asian community in the exhibition has brought a heightened sense of emotion and new meaning to the objects on display, the result of the understanding and trust cultivated between the museum and the community over time. The NTM invited Southeast Asians to tell the stories of these objects from the perspective of their own cultures, and this respect for diverse cultures deserves recognition, Lin emphasized.

For its exhibition A Centenary Dialog—When Transnational Migrants and Museum Collections Cross Paths, the National Taiwan Museum invited immigrants in Taiwan to participate in tracing the origins and history of its collection of Southeast-Asian artifacts.