The Brunei museum
This is a brief descriptive note by Tom Harrisson on the newly completed Brunei Museum, published in JMBRAS Vol. 45 (1972).
Summary
Harrisson describes the museum’s hilltop site at Kota Batu, its opening by Queen Elizabeth II on 29 February 1972, and its physical layout: three floors with 39,000 sq ft of display space, 9,000 for research, and 5,000 for storage (p. 119). He highlights the ceramic and bronze gallery of Chinese and Southeast Asian export wares, the locally made Brunei cannon, ethnological collections of Borneo tribal groups, life-size reconstructions of hunting and fishing, diorama natural history exhibits, and walk-in replicas of Kadayan, Besaya, and Dayak long-houses (p. 119).
The note also covers the museum’s research output under Curator Pengeran Shariffuddin, including three issues of the Brunei Museum Journal and monographs by Donald Brown and Harrisson himself on prehistoric wood from Kota Batu (p. 119). Harrisson closes by situating the museum within the broader Borneo context, noting that all three ex-British states now have effective museums while Indonesian Kalimantan still lacks a full-quality institution (p. 120).