My colleague Manvi Seth and I have been collaborating on a project to explore how museum objects and people interact.
I approach the work as an anthropologist focused on people’s relationships with their material world, while Seth – the head of the museology department in India’s National Museum Institute in New Delhi – explores from a museum education perspective.
Our plan involved research in three kinds of Indian museums and three UK institutions with comparable identities.
Earlier this year, after receiving funding from the British Academy and British Council, we undertook our first fieldwork in the City Palace Museum (CPM, also known as the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum), Jaipur, a splendid Rajasthani royal palace and a major Indian and international tourist attraction.
We didn’t want to centre our research on asking visitors questions about why they were attracted to particular objects so we concentrated on fine-grained observations of people and things at particular gallery spots or cases.
The collection includes, for example, a pair of giant silver water jars that were taken to the UK in 1902 by Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II for the coronation of Edward VII as he wanted to drink only Ganges water while away from home.
We also introduced object handling tables into two of the galleries – something entirely new at the CPM and, indeed, unfamiliar to most Indian museum-goers – using high-quality replicas of objects in the galleries.
These activities not only produced wonderfully rich data for our project but proved to be so popular with visitors that they have now been introduced by the CPM in all their galleries and some of their outdoor spaces, too.
Leading a large research team in a large and busy museum was an exciting first for someone used to being a “lone anthropologist”.
Sandra Dudley is a senior lecturer in the school of museum studies, University of Leicester
I approach the work as an anthropologist focused on people’s relationships with their material world, while Seth – the head of the museology department in India’s National Museum Institute in New Delhi – explores from a museum education perspective.
Our plan involved research in three kinds of Indian museums and three UK institutions with comparable identities.
Earlier this year, after receiving funding from the British Academy and British Council, we undertook our first fieldwork in the City Palace Museum (CPM, also known as the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum), Jaipur, a splendid Rajasthani royal palace and a major Indian and international tourist attraction.
We didn’t want to centre our research on asking visitors questions about why they were attracted to particular objects so we concentrated on fine-grained observations of people and things at particular gallery spots or cases.
The collection includes, for example, a pair of giant silver water jars that were taken to the UK in 1902 by Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II for the coronation of Edward VII as he wanted to drink only Ganges water while away from home.
We also introduced object handling tables into two of the galleries – something entirely new at the CPM and, indeed, unfamiliar to most Indian museum-goers – using high-quality replicas of objects in the galleries.
These activities not only produced wonderfully rich data for our project but proved to be so popular with visitors that they have now been introduced by the CPM in all their galleries and some of their outdoor spaces, too.
Leading a large research team in a large and busy museum was an exciting first for someone used to being a “lone anthropologist”.
Sandra Dudley is a senior lecturer in the school of museum studies, University of Leicester
