CIVAS
(CENTER for INDONESIAN VISUAL ART STUDIES)
CIVAS begins as a repository of digital art archives of Indonesian arts history. We have been digitizing and collecting several historical archives such as artworks, old photos, documents, drawings, teaching materials, and posters specified to Bandung school to trace the pioneering of our school, now known as Institut Teknologi Bandung.
CIVAS begins with the initiative to preserve the archives of Soemardja Gallery. Soemardja Gallery is the oldest university art gallery in Indonesia. It was established in 1974, bearing a name to honor the first Indonesian Director of Balai Besar Guru Gambar. The gallery has grown dynamically and progressively as a university gallery. As time goes by, Soemardja Gallery has also accumulated archives, documents, and artifacts from 1947. Some even dated back to 1920, to the Institut Teknologi Bandung establishment.
These historical archives and cultural artifacts have great significance for the university, Indonesian history, and the cultural history of the Asian region.
We design annual activities and collaborative events such as international workshops, seminars, and roundtable discussions that are expected to lead to collaborative research opportunities. Our mission and primary goal are to become a center of excellence in 2027.
—
We are very conscious about how we preserve and how to disseminate knowledge. This purpose becomes our basic consideration in mapping what we could possibly do. We are trying to protect and share the knowledge from our existing archives, digitized materials from the donor’s estate, then transform all the archives digitally to become more accessible for public.
We are very concerned that we still lack the access to the historical archives, especially in the university. We assume that it also has to do with a lack of awareness for documenting, especially in digital format, including its activation and dissemination for educational purposes.
To fill the gap, in 2017, we led a Bandung School Documentation Project 2018. The materials will become our unique collections. We divide the group into three periods, the 1940s, 1950s, and 1950s until the 1960s. We also plan to expand the project to collect the Indonesian visual art archives through international networking. We plan to open for the public in 2025.
The establishment of CIVAS aims to support a wide range researches on Indonesian art studies, which the availability of data or archives are very limited. We also disseminating the context through research, exhibition, and public programs. Regarding those purposes and considering the particular CIVAS’s position in an educational institution, we are trying to make a system that could be more conceptualized and responsible, especially in terms of studies, legal also ethical aspects of using digital archives.
This initiative is expected to be a tool which we can reflect and interpret what has happened since 1947 at our school. This thoughtful gesture to the past can become the idea to formulate what to do in the future: it can be adaptive or innovative. Through our collection, we can see the history milestone of our school.