May 6, 2002
Hot Spot
The National Museum's biggest spectacle isn't
in its galleries
By Steve Friess.
BATTY ATTRACTIONS It's probably not a good
sign when the most interesting feature of an art museum isn't
the art. But many museums around the world show off great art
and sculpture; only one hosts a massive colony of rare bats in
its attic that stream out by the hundreds of thousands at sundown.
Visitors gather on the sidewalks around the National Museum in
Phnom Penh on clear evenings to watch the stunning exodus; and
it saves them the $2 cost of admission.
The bats started making their home under the
red roof during Khmer Rouge rule, when the museum was vacant.
By the early 1990s, curators were desperate to evict them as
droppings—up to a ton a month—coated the artifacts below and
threatened to collapse the second-floor ceiling. A putrid stench
distracted gallery patrons, and on one memorable occasion, bat
lice in the air elicited an allergic reaction from a visiting
Thai princess.
But conservationists protested. The four species
of bats living at the museum are unusual: scientists say the
Cambodian Free-Tailed Bat, in particular, can be found nowhere
else in the world. In addition, the museum's 2 million bats
were messy but useful: they were credited with eating an estimated
17 tons of insects each night, helping reduce mosquito-borne
malaria. So the government scrapped its plan to eradicate the
bats. (Another factor was that the museum makes $250 a month
selling bat guano.) A second, wooden ceiling, installed in 1995,
failed to keep the excrement out of the gallery, so the New
York City-based Wildlife Conservation Society is trying to raise
$1 million to replace it with a concrete one.
Museum director Khun Samen resents the attention
the bats receive—he would rather have the public focus on his
collections, a centerpiece of which is the original Leper King
statue from the Angkor Thom region, rare partly because the
ancient sculpture is nude. Still, when travelers trade tips
about the National Museum on the Internet, they usually describe
how best to view the dusk drama. Which, of course, drives the
administration batty.
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