Raimond Selke
Universiti Putra Malaysia
Malaysia
The National Museum of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur – A study about the visitors
and their knowledge of cultural heritage
The National Museum of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur was established in 1963 and
serves as a repository of Malaysia’s rich cultural and historical heritage. It has since
then showed many temporary exhibitions and witnessed some refurbishments and
improvements in relation to the four major exhibition galleries.
In 2007 the Museum Volunteer Malaysia (MVM) organization was founded. Today
the volunteers are providing guided tours through the permanent collection. The
Museum Volunteers promote public awareness of museums, and aim to build an
appreciation and understanding of the history and cultures of Malaysia.
The question we are focusing on is: How do/should we communicate cultural
heritage to tourists and the public at large in an age of immediacy, a time of multiple
realities and in multicultural societies?
Taking the MVM movement as an example, volunteers offer one of many mediums
of communication.
Sites/artifacts/built or intangible heritage may be turned alive by the enthusiasm of
volunteers into messages of meanings and questions of mind challenges/games. By
the own background of volunteers adding on a richer layer of thoughts seen through
the volunteers eyes, multicultural characteristics reach out to the audience and vice
versa. There is no doubt that virtual tourism in this age of IT and turning museums
into "theme parks" in this age of commercializing technology, "old school" museums
may lose their appeal to generations after 1990 "X and Y." Volunteerism in this
scenario is a breath of fresh life to the old breed of museums.
We aim for a comparative study by qualitative and quantitative data survey with
questionnaires among international museum visitors. The two groups we compare
are (a) visitors who visit the museum without a guided tour, and (b) visitors who visit
the museum with a guided tour provided by museum volunteers.
The findings will presumably help to strengthen the image of the museum
volunteers and emphasize the importance of such volunteer work for the National
Museum in Kuala Lumpur and in general for museums worldwide.