April 6, 2006 Source: :
http://www.sfu.ca/mediapr/news_releases/archives/news04060601.htm Museum Receives Rare Puppet Collection Contact
Barbara Winter, 604.291.3325; barbara_winter@sfu.ca
Marianne Meadahl/Julie Ovenell-Carter, Media & PR, 604.291.4323 April 06, 2006
Simon Fraser University's museum of archaeology and ethnology has become home to a rare collection of antique Indonesian shadow puppets, known as wayang kulit. The collection includes nearly 600 intricately designed and brightly painted puppets that have been kept in exceptional quality and condition. Research carried out by SFU International's Chris Dagg and Indonesian experts helped establish their provenance. Created by artists using buffalo skin and horns, the artworks are dated from somewhere between the 1870s and 1920s. Researchers note the important role played by several prominent Chinese-Indonesian families in helping secure the survival of traditional Indonesian arts in the tumultuous pre-independence period. The anonymous donor is an Indonesian immigrant of Chinese descent whose family had taken on the responsibility of securing the artwork's safe-keeping. The collection was kept safe for generations and brought to Canada when they fled persecution in 1965. "The donor wants to emphasize that he is donating the collection as an expression of gratitude to Canada for the opportunities the country has given their family," says Barbara Winter, museum curator. "They also hope that the collection can be enjoyed by people here, as it was in Indonesia in better days." Given SFU's long established support of traditional Indonesian arts, the university museum will be a natural home for the collection, Winter notes. SFU has offered students opportunities to learn to play the gamelan, a traditional Indonesian musical instrument, through a popular course in the school for the contemporary arts. The gamelan and wayang are performed together, each complementing the other. Winter expects the collection to become a permanent exhibition somewhere within SFU. -30-
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