Hafnidar

Biography

Hafnidar has been Manager of the Tsunami Museum since 2018 and is currently working on the Tsunami Museum Disaster Digital Archive (DDA) project where the knowledge and experiences of thousands of people impacted by the 2004 Tsunami can be shared. She is also focused on visitor engagement, exhibitions and increasing the visibility of the Museum to a global audience.

At the time of the ITP Hafnidar was Head of Museum Education and Collection at Museum Aceh and was responsible for managing staff including volunteers, leading education programme design for school group visits, providing information for researchers and supervising the finding, acquisition, registration, documentation, display and the whole management of the collections at Museum Aceh.

During her time in that role, Hafnidar re-designed the permanent exhibition from a static to a dynamic concept and carried out background research to increase the size of the collection. She initiated a volunteer programme during weekends to improve the museum service for visitors and improved how her team managed their time and work load. She re-designed the official museum website to include new branding and external publications and she developed a public programme at local schools to encourage students’ interest and engagement in traditional activities or games related to museum education.

Hafnidar is immensely interested in exhibition design and all of the elements required including preparation, techniques, and materials to be used in the exhibition; thinking how to convey substantial meaning of items to support the display value and how to explore, analyse, design, and realise the ideas. Hafnidar finds it challenging yet highly motivating to work with many ideas from co-workers – to select, collect and combine the best ideas which create the final exhibition.

Hafnidar has worked on projects including designing a permanent exhibition at Balaikirti Museum about the presidents of Indonesia and assisting with the preparation and acquiring of new objects for the new Lhokseumawe City Museum in Aceh.

At the British Museum
During her time on the International Training Programme 2017, Hafnidar was based in the Asia Department and spent her partner placement at Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums in Newcastle.

In 2017 participants were asked to develop a proposal for an Asahi Shimbun Display – a temporary exhibition in Room 3 at the British Museum – based around a ‘spotlight’ object.  Hafnidar worked with fellow Matsosane Molibeli (Lesotho) on her exhibition proposal project, entitled The Royal Touch: Basotho Blankets and Identity.

Hafnidar’s participation on the International Training Programme was generously supported by the Indonesian Embassy in London.

ITP Newsletter Publications
ITP Newsletter Issue 6 (2019), Global perspectives: Disaster Digital Archive (DDA) of the Tsunami Museum