Museums, heritage, culture : into the conflict zone

Are universal museums still relevant in this day and age, with their authoritarian neutrality, modernist layout and hard objectivity? That was the question that Indian art historian Kavita Singh posed to a packed auditorium during the Reinwardt Memorial Lecture on 4 June 2014. In this paper, she relates some instances in which museums and the professionalised heritage regime they represent became the flashpoints for misunderstandings between cultures. Drawing upon events that occurred in her neighbourhood (Dhaka in Bangladesh, Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan, and Chandigarh in India) she discussses episodes in which museums or museum culture writ large caused tensions, anxieties, distrust and anger, and precipitated crises between communities, cultures or nations.