Taiwan helps new museum in Belize City
It’s no state secret that for too many years, much of Belize’s history has been exhibited in other countries to be enjoyed by other people. Fortunately, that practice is set to come to a screeching halt as Belize gets ready to open its first major museum. Today News 5 got a sneak peak of the nearly finished project.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
After a lengthy gestation, the idea of the Museum of Belize is finally coming to full term. With a grand opening scheduled for early February, the restoration team is busy putting on the finishing touches. Today the project got a significant boost as the Republic of China on Taiwan presented a check for close to seven hundred thousand dollars to the Government of Belize.
Charles Tsai, Taiwanese Ambassador to Belize
“This museum will not only serve as a wonderful means for helping Belizeans to better appreciate their culture and heritage, but also act as an educational tourist attraction.”
Prime Minister Said Musa
“It has a tremendous industrious value, economic value, in addition to the great culture wealth that we want to exhibit to the world. So I feel very good about it.”
Janelle Chanona
“All the items and documents et cetera that is currently stored in Belmopan, how much of that is going to be relocated to Belize City?”
Prime Minister Said Musa
“What we’ll be doing, is upstairs there will be a permanent Mayan exhibition. And as you know, we have thousands of exhibits in that area, so that will rotate or change from time to time. The main storage unit will remain in Belmopan, the conservatory if you like. But down here, as you know, there’s a lot of space in this building, we will have having different types of exhibits.”
The man in charge the prison restoration, architect Julius Espat, explains that as much of the original building was brought back to its former beauty.
Julius Espat, Restoration Supervisor
“The budget that we had limited us to what we could do. What we did was change the floors, both upper and ground floor, we restores the lower of the building to the original brick form. The budgeting allowed us to do a full restoration of the upper walls, but we did it in a way that it helped the museographic works, so it goes in the context of what we wanted. And the putting together of the museum, basically, it’s like a large exposition, it will come together when the museum of Belmopan is in place, as a unit. And we’re about finishing right now, a couple days more and we should be out.”
When the museum opens it will feature two exhibits…one on the Maya and another entitled “Belize: Then and Now”. Artist Gilvano Swasey has the job of setting up the exhibit, while still protecting the background.
Gilvano Swasey, Exhibit Curator
“It’s a big task because usually at the gallery we just put holes in the walls and patch it up afterwards, but this is completely different. So it is a bit tricky, and it’s not like setting up a regular exhibition where you have paintings of coconut trees go over here, houses go over here. It’s not really themes. This exhibition is more about feeling, emotions. People will see things, even with the Maya exhibition, there’ll be objects and things you haven’t seen before, or that you’ve seen in other museums in Mexico or the States, objects that we own and things like that. But it’s more about emotions and people, creating an identity, this is what the museum is all about.”
Reporting for News 5, I am Janelle Chanona.
The museum’s opening is set to coincide with the Intercessional meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government to be held in the first week of February.
