19.8.2026 Wednesday - re-visiting Alfred Russell Wallace

 In 2013, Louise* from Friends Of Sarawak Museum approached us with an idea for an exhibition on Alfred Russell Wallace (8 Jan 1823 - 7 Nov 1913), the renowned English naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and illustrator. Wallace was a contemporary of Charles Darwin, who independently conceived the theory of evolution through natural selection, and the creation of the Wallace Line; a distinct zoogeographical boundary dividing Asian and Australasian species. Notably for us in Borneo, Wallace spent some time in Sarawak (1854-56) where he wrote his seminal paper 'Sarawak Law' about species distribution. 

The former Sarawak Museum building (photo from Wikipedia)

The gallery would be located in one wing of the Sarawak Museum and is intended to be temporary lasting 2 – 3 years, targeting the general public, especially children. Our aim is to explore a different way of exhibiting the artifacts while considering educational intent, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness.

In line of the intrepid character of Wallace's work, we proposed the idea that the exhibition can be a 'traveling' exhibition; relocating from one place to another, and perhaps reaching the smaller towns in Sarawak.

Wallace spent a significant portion of his life in Sarawak and made several important discoveries here. We drew inspiration from Alfred Wallace’s ‘moth nets’ — a device he rigged in the jungle using bedsheets hung like a three-sided room, with a hurricane lamp in the middle to attract insect specimens.

The gallery in the museum is a tall open space. We propose to create a prolonged journey through the exhibition space by constructing a series of rooms using his ‘moth nets.’ The displays will then be printed or mounted on the ‘walls, of these rooms. The walls are hung from a ceiling grid and would have display information printed on them. Underfoot we proposed a layer of crushed fabric that would rustle and shift as visitors move through the rooms, mimicking the leaves in the jungle's undergrowth. 

We prepared some presentation material, made a model and presented it to the relevant authorities who were at the time busy with the construction of the New Borneo Cultures Museum. Without a firm plan, this proposal remained unbuilt; a fortnight of ideas compiled into a refreshing and nifty way to communicate with a younger museum audience. 

Recently, at the international art exhibition between Malaysia and Taiwan titled 'Tanah+Air: Navigating Asianness from Malaysia, (土地與水：從馬來西亞出發探訪亞洲性) I was pleased to see a section on Alfred Wallace.

* Dr Louise M. Macul is a prominent museulogist, widely recognized for her extensive work and research on the Orang Ulu murals.