Alele Museum & Public Library

Alele Museum & Public Library is the national museum and the national archive of the Marshall Islands. It also hosts the only public library in the country.

Alele Museum & Public Library
Alele Museum & Public Library
Formation1981
Staff (2020)
10
Websitehttps://www.alele.org/

Background

The idea of a museum for the Marshall Islands was first developed in 1968 with the Marshall Islands Museum Committee meeting initially of 8 February that year.[1] On 25 March 1970, a charter was incorporated for a Marshall Islands Museum. It was decided that the museum and library would share a purpose-built premises and the building was completed in 1974.[2]

As of 2020, the organisation had ten staff.[3] The alele means bag or basket in Marshallese, and represents a particular receptacle in which a family's valuables would have traditionally been kept.[4]

Museum

The museum opened in 1981 and has been in continuous operation since then, apart from between 2011 and 2013.[3] The museum is on the ground floor of the building and has exhibits across three rooms. Displays focus on Marshallese culture, including traditional navigation, warfare, tools, crafts and jewellery.[5] Due to a lack of space, the museum is unable to display the large items from its textile collection, in particular its nieded which are traditional women's cloths.[3]

The museum also organisations the Manit Day celebrations, which encourages the celebration of Marshallese culture.[3]

A major aspect of the museum's public engagement work is its regular radio program which has been running since the 1980s and connects people in the outer islands in particular to the work of the museum.[2][3]

Collections and research
Marshallese navigational chart, on display in Alele Museum in 2008
Marshallese navigational chart on display at Alele Museum

The museum's collection includes traditional tools, objects relating to housing, jewellery, drums, fishing apparatus, tattooing, weaving, canoes (and model canoes), and navigation, including stick charts, a Marshallese nautical tool used to memorise wave patterns.[6][7] The museum has been active in collecting and recording traditional Marshallese crafts.[8]

The museum has collaborated to understand and create listings for Marshallese intangible heritage, in particular work on indigenous navigation.[9] The museum is part of an international collaboration building a digital archive of nuclear history relating to the country.[10][11] In 2004 the museum led a new research project investigating Marshallese traditional medicine.[4]

Overseas collections

In part, due to legacies of colonialism, many overseas institutions hold collections of Marshallese material culture, including: Penn Museum;[12] Burke Museum;[13] Te Papa;[14] the Metropolitan Museum of Art;[15] British Museum,[16] amongst others.

  • Fish trap, collected 1942 (National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka)
    Fish trap, collected 1942 (National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka)
  • Necklace: sperm whale teeth, glass beads, spondylus disks, plant fiber, Marshall Islands, 1891 (Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde München)
    Necklace: sperm whale teeth, glass beads, spondylus disks, plant fiber, Marshall Islands, 1891 (Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde München)
  • Adzes, Marshall and Yap Islands (Peabody Museum)
    Adzes, Marshall and Yap Islands (Peabody Museum)
  • Carrying basket for water containers of coconut shell, Marshall Islands, 1895 - (Ethnological Museum, Berlin)
    Carrying basket for water containers of coconut shell, Marshall Islands, 1895 - (Ethnological Museum, Berlin)
  • Clothing mat, Marshall Islands (Ethnological Museum, Berlin)
    Clothing mat, Marshall Islands (Ethnological Museum, Berlin)
  • Plants collectioned for the United States National Museum, with surplus herbarium material sent to Honolulu Museum
    Plants collectioned for the United States National Museum, with surplus herbarium material sent to Honolulu Museum
  • Dress mat from Marshall Islands, Honolulu Museum of Art
    Dress mat from Marshall Islands, Honolulu Museum of Art
  • Stick chart, Marshall Islands - Pacific collection - Peabody Museum
    Stick chart, Marshall Islands - Pacific collection - Peabody Museum

Library
Marshallese alphabet displayed in library in 2002.

The library is located on the second floor of the building; it has a dedicated area for children's literature, as well as a Pacific section.[5] The library has a strong research collection that focuses on the Marshall Islands. It also supports computer literacy, through learning programmes.[3]

Archive

In the 1980s, under a government mandate, the National Archives were located at Alele Museum.[3] The archive has a large microfilm collection.[3] The archive also has an internationally significant collection of video recordings of islands life from the 1980s to the 2000s. The archive began a digitisation project in 2017.[3]

The Joachim de Brum photographic collection and archive is also on loan to the organisation.[17] This collection consists of the papers and glass plate negatives belonging to the de Brum family, who are descended from Jose de Brum, one of the first Portuguese settlers and his wife, Likemeto, the daughter of the former Irooj of Likiep. This archive provides a unique insight into Marshallese life in the nineteenth century.[3]

Former directors

References
  1. Kernot, Bernie (1984). "Review of "Kuai Maueha, 1933-1981. A posthumous exhibition held at the Australian High Commission, Suva, 16 December, 1983, to 12 January, 1984"". Pacific Arts Newsletter (19): 11–13. ISSN 0111-5774. JSTOR 23411292.
  2. Dark, Philip J.C. (1988). "Museums in Micronesia". Pacific Arts Newsletter (26): 12–20. ISSN 0111-5774. JSTOR 23408934.
  3. "Republic of the Marshall Islands | Institute of Museum and Library Services". www.imls.gov. Retrieved 2021-05-04.
  4. Petrosian-Husa, Carmen C.H. (2004). "ACTIVITIES OF THE ALELE MUSEUM IN 2004" (PDF). Micronesian Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences. 3.
  5. "Alele Museum and Library • Marshall Islands Guide". Marshall Islands Guide. 2017-12-02. Retrieved 2021-05-03.
  6. "Alele Museum & Public Library | Marshall Islands Attractions". Lonely Planet. Retrieved 2021-05-03.
  7. Loeak, Anono Lieom; Kiluwe, Veronica C.; Crowl, Linda (2004). Life in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. editorips@usp.ac.fj. ISBN 978-982-02-0364-8.
  8. Spennemann, Dirk R.; Putt, Neal (2001). Cultural Interpretation of Heritage Sites in the Pacific. Pacific Islands Museums Association. ISBN 978-982-9056-01-6.
  9. "Micronesian journal of the humanities and social sciences". Trove. Retrieved 2021-05-06.
  10. "Nuclear archive in progress". marshallislandsjournal.com. 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-04-29. Retrieved 2021-05-03.
  11. "Marshall Islands". Atomic Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 2021-05-06.
  12. "Expedition Magazine - Penn Museum". www.penn.museum. Retrieved 2021-05-06.
  13. "Contemporary Culture Database - Marshall Islands". www.burkemuseum.org. Archived from the original on 2021-05-06. Retrieved 2021-05-06.
  14. "Marshall Islands". collections.tepapa.govt.nz. Archived from the original on 2021-05-06. Retrieved 2021-05-06.
  15. "Marshall Islands". www.metmuseum.org. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2021-05-06.
  16. "chart | British Museum". The British Museum. Retrieved 2021-05-06.
  17. "Alele Museum in Marshall Islands". Pacific Tourism Organisation. 2017-07-14. Retrieved 2021-05-03.
  18. Petrosian-Husa, Carmen (2004). Anthropological Survey of Arno Atoll. Republic of the Marshall Islands Historic Preservation Office.

7.107574°N 171.373472°E / 7.107574; 171.373472

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