Authors: Ben Ruhe
Date Submitted: August 31, 2003
Article Type: Journal

Endang W. Puspoyo of Jakarta, Indonesia, was attracted to kites by their beauty many years ago. She soon began making and flying her own, then took to collecting them. She helped organize the first international festival in Jakarta in l993, and has been a force in Indonesian kiting ever since.

With a powerful cabinet minister husband supporting her, she has now opened her own museum, actually a complex of found old buildings and new construction.

The museum is 15 miles from downtown Jakarta

Endang conceived of the museum just two years ago, but being a woman of action made her dream of showing off her kites to the public come true in short order. Because she and friends travel a lot, she was able to locate a classic old teak house in east Java which she purchased from the occupant, a woman 100 years old. (Now 102, the woman lives with relatives who can care for her.) Endang had the house disassembled and trucked to Jakarta where it was reconstructed piece by piece. The structure is accurately dated to 1859, just before the American Civil War, from a coin found imbedded in the sill to propitiate spirits.

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