Former minister of culture Dr Frank Anthony is appealing to government to save the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology as it holds invaluable artifacts of not only this country but South America’s ancient history and peoples.
“I think it’s a real tragic decision… It has been around since 1974 and over the years and to date continues to be developed. You have a lot of collections there that anthropologists and archaeologists have discovered, some date back to the 1800s and some are not in the best of conditions that can be moved just like that,” Anthony told Stabroek News on Sunday.
To facilitate use by the Ministry of the Presidency, government on Thursday confirmed that the Museum would be relocated to the western wing of the National Museum. The confirmation was made via a statement from the Ministry of Presidency, and came one day after State Minister Joseph Harmon told Stabroek News that his government was considering the move.
It was not stated which ministry’s departments would be housed at the building but the statement noted that in recent months the Department of Environment and the Department of National Events were added to the ministry.
The statement said too that works would be carried out on the National Museum “to ensure that both facilities meet international standards.”
But Anthony, who has detailed insight into both museums noted that given the fragility of some of the artifacts at Walter Roth, the risk to have local personnel move them further north of Main Street to the National Museum was too grave. In addition, he informed that it was known that the National Museum did not have space to even hold its current collection, more so take off others.
“The National Museum, as far as I am aware, there is no space there. The current collection overwhelms the space… For them to exhibit, they will take some in storage and put out. So they have to rotate. The upstairs, with the stuffed animals, well they are pretty much fixed there. You can’t really move those around. So I am at loss at this move,” he asserted.
“For the government to close it up and just transfer it to somewhere else I think it’s a real tragic decision. If we don’t preserve, we are going to lose them. To the ordinary eye, it might just look like thread potter. Things like that can’t just be stored, you have ancient fish traps there; they don’t make them anymore. You have tools made of fishbone and other collectables that the Amerindians of today, they don’t use them anymore. It seems that the current government is culturally insensitive … Why would you want to move something so valuable to our history, to the history of our indigenous people. Something is definitely wrong.”
Anthony noted that the Walter Roth Museum is the only one of its kind in the Caribbean that holds artifacts of the history of its first peoples coupled with myriad project and research works stored in the upper flat of the building.
He said there are international partners from overseas universities who would periodically visit the museum, even as they undertake their own research. “For example there is the Boise State University that has been working there and others,” he said.
He also named local professors and lecturers of Amerindian Studies at the University of Guyana who partner with the museum and have been taking local students around the country and teaching them to do archaeological excavations, yearly.
“Just about a week ago Dr Flue conducted a session and had students there. We are learning more and more about our history and our past. We have found that there were people living… in the Berbice River longer that history states. There is a lot of work ongoing in the Berbice River… That building has been the focal point of the archaeology. This has been going on over the years… If people do not understand what we have there and look at some of the collections and think it is nonsense they would dump it,” Anthony posited.
He pointed to one of the founders of the museum Dr Denis Williams whose works and research are available to researchers and stored at the building.
Anthony said that 42 years ago, Dr Williams made an impressive appeal to the then government, which saw the building that was once the Attorney General’s residence, dedicated to Anthropology and its research. He stressed that all governments since then have appreciated the work being conducted at the museum; he questioned justification for its move now.
“Apart from the artifacts, upstairs there is a library on archeology and anthropology on Amerindian heritage there is a good lot of research materials… Where will we put these things? It appears to me that the administration doesn’t appreciate the treasure trove we have. It is an insult. Just because somebody wants to set up an office they move it? If they want office space let them go somewhere else, there are a lot of buildings all over. If you close this institution, how are we going to continue? Where will the focal point be? Whoever made the decision probably doesn’t understand the work… It is more than storage. …Work goes on every day,” he added.
As such he is pleading with the David Granger administration to reverse the decision. “I think they should reverse the decision… Preserve our national sites… Why we want to get make them homeless? There is something radically wrong here,” he said.
