Sumbawa, The Indonesia Herald - The Bala Datu Ranga Museum is known as one of the museums that became a learning house for Sumbawa's local history and culture, especially in the late era of the Sumbawa Sultanate. After Dzuhur prayer (5/8), we were welcomed by Yuli Andari Merdikaningtyas, M.A., the Head of the Bala Datu Ranga Museum who is also a national documentary filmmaker. The museum holds the family memory of the Prime Minister of Sumbawa Sultanate, Datu Ranga Abdul Madjid Daeng Matutu, and the local people of Sumbawa. Before becoming a museum, Bala Datu Ranga was the residence of the family and descendants of the last Prime Minister in the Sumbawa Sultanate era, including as the birthplace of young filmmakers who are now working in the museum world.
According to psychologist, research team member, and lecturer at Universitas 17 Agustus Surabaya, Anrilia E.M Ningdyah, S.Psi., M.Ed., Ph.D, said, "Psychologically, memory provides an experience of closeness, a site of memories, and brings up feelings. The feelings that arise in the spaces in the Bala Datu Ranga Museum are a sign that memories and interactions that once existed are being revived."
This statement was also added by another member of the research team, Lecturer at Institut Seni Budaya Indonesia (ISBI) Bandung, Dr. Wanda Listiani, M.Ds. According to Wanda, the boundaries of memory can also touch museum visitors or tourists who want to know more about the late Sumbawa Sultanate in the past, the visibility of the Prime Minister and his relationship with the formation of the local history of the surrounding community. "The Bala Datu Ranga Museum plays an important role in providing a transmedia narrative about the figure of the last Prime Minister of the Sumbawa Sultanate as displayed in the museum with community involvement".
Furthermore, Dr. Wanda explained that museums are actively used in building and reinterpreting people's social memory. Sumbawa people's local memory practices and initiatives in the context of the Bala Datu Ranga Museum and their dynamic interaction with the Prime Minister of the Sultanate of Sumbawa. "The space of the Bala Datu Ranga museum is also used to commemorate, interpret and renegotiate Sumbawa's local history as the museum tries to offer an alternative form of public space for social encounters and transmission of memory of the surrounding community."
The Bala Datu Ranga Museum is focused on the reconstruction of local culture and the representation of the everyday landscape of the family of the Prime Minister of the Sultanate of Sumbawa as well as a response to past social changes so that the museum also provides a space for local people to negotiate, communicate and compromise with local history through the museum's collections and the architecture of the building. So it can be said that the Bala Datu Ranga Museum contributes to visitors' understanding of the collective memory of the people of Sumbawa.
According to Prof. Dr. Sri Rustiyanti, M.Sn, a lecturer at ISBI Bandung as well as the Head of the Applied Research Scheme Research Team funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2024 explained, "The interesting thing about the Bala Datu Ranga Museum is that the local archive collection that is owned is not only limited to touching memory but can reveal stories about the history of the Prime Minister's family and the Sumbawa Sultanate Government, as well as improving educational experiences and pedagogical development for museum visitors or elementary and secondary school students".
He continued, "We chose the Bala Datu Ranga Museum as a research locus that is still complete with mantifacts, sociofacts and artifacts to further reveal in depth the Art of Pencak and Gentao during the Sumbawa Sultanate period until now".
The practice of cultural heritage and inheritance for the younger generation is continuously practiced in every program of the Bala Datu Ranga Museum as a means to develop culturally sustainable community welfare as well as an effort to improve tourist well-being. Cultural sustainability enables the continuity of cultural identity and facilitates the development of the creative economy of the people of Sumbawa.