Museums and the Present: Issues of Community, Locality and Contextual Relevance

Speaker: Dr. Karen Exell, Lecturer in Museum Studies and Programme Director of the Masters Program in Museum and Gallery Practice, University College London, Qatar campus. Her recent publications include the co-edited volume, Heritage Debates in the Arabian Peninsula (Ashgate, 2014); and the forthcoming monograph, Museums in the Arabian Peninsula: Globalisation and the Politics of Representation (working title)
 
Museums were developed in many parts of the world during the colonial period to ‘visualise and objectify’ the colonised people and country for the coloniser, as Sheila Bhatti has argued in relation to the Lahore Museum. Following decolonisation the perception has remained amongst local communities that these ‘colonial’ museums are irrelevant to their contemporary concerns. Using models from a variety of countries this lecture argues that museums in post-colonial countries such as India have the opportunity to significantly enrich the lives of their local communities through creative interventions, and to realign these museums with contemporary socio-political concerns