Translating Museums ─ A Counterhistory of South Asian Museology

Shaila Bhatti's immersive study of the Lahore Museum in Pakistan is one of the first books to offer an in-depth historical and ethnographic analysis of a South Asian museum. Bhatti thus presents an alternative example of visitor experience and museum practice to that of the West, which has been the dominant museological model to date. This examination of the Lahore Museum's objects, staff, and visitors (past and present) provides an informative case study that reveals local perceptions and uses of museums in non-Western societies to be fraught with social, political, and cultural implications and appropriations. Through Lahore, Bhatti examines the history of exchange between Britian and South Asia and advances our current understanding of what constitutes postcolonial museum interpretation and its public.

Shaila Bhatti is currently an Honorary Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology, University College London, where she also gained her PhD and held an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship. Over the last decade, she has conducted ethnographic research on museums in India and Pakistan with doctoral research focusing on the Lahore Museum in Pakistan. Her research and publications explore the history of museums in South Asia as well as their contemporary significance as moments of cultural and visual encounters for society in terms of collections, curatorial activities, exhibitionary practices and visitor interpretation. Her interests extend beyond museum anthropology to include the material and visual cultures of South Asia and local notions of cultural heritage, history and identity.