The rise in the study of antiquities would reach a climax in 1862, when
the construction of a museum was decided upon. Its opening took place in
1868 (Djojonegoro 1998: 25). Some of the objects were donated by Raden
Saleh (1807–80), one of theWve Indonesian members of the Batavian
Society. Saleh was a noble Javanese artist, theWrst to paint in the Western
style. He had been educated in The Netherlands, and had subsequently lived
in Germany and travelled in Europe and North Africa (Algiers). It seems
that during these years he had been fairly successful as an artist, and it has
been suggested that his wealth meant that he did not face the rejection—at
least not to the same extent—which was the usual plight of non-European
artists. Back in Indonesia in 1851 he worked as a curator for the art
collection of the colonial government. Saleh also promoted the study of
antiquities as a private sponsor: he donated to the museum the Kebantenan
inscriptions, old inscribed bronze tablets from the Sundas, and funded
excavations in central Java. HisWgure should be considered as theWrst
clear example of the success of the Western narrative in local scholarship
in the area. He had accepted it as hegemonic but at the same timeWltered it
to reject the racist colonial overtones that would have left him in a second
plane.
The National Museum building, which in its external appearance followed
the European model (it had a neoclassical fac ̧ade with Doric columns), was
decorated with a white elephant statue donated by the King of Siam, Chula-
longkorn (Rama V) on his visit to Java in 1870. The choice of an elephant
motif may have been highly political: in the Thai tradition a white elephant was
considered to be a noble beast of special importance, exemplifying a king’s
honour and glory. How it was perceived by the Europeans is, however, a moot
point. In 1887 a catalogue of the museum collections was published by Willem
Pieter Groeneveldt. This came only two years after Leemans had published his
catalogue of the Indonesian collections held at the Leiden Museum in 1885.
Furthermore, a description of Java’s antiquities was published by the geologist
Roger D. M. Verbeek in 1891 (Soekmono 1969: 94). Following the further
geographical expansion of the Dutch East Indies, which began around 1870,
the collections of the museum in Jakarta grew. Thus, material from the Kratons
(palaces) of Lombok (Lesser Sunda Islands), Banten (Java) and Banjarmasin
(Borneo), which arrived in the institution, resulted from military raids
(Djojonegoro 1998: 25–6). A few objects were found by society members
on their travels in the islands, and after the government’s approval their
transferral to the museum was decided. Finally, other museum collections
were given as presents by society members and outsiders. From the 1860s
and 1870s the Dutch photographer Isodore van Kinsbergen (1821–1905)
was commissioned by the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences to take
220 Colonial Archaeology