SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Over the past decades, Ladakh in northwest India has experienced a museum boom with the creation of exhibitionary spaces in many of the key Buddhist monasteries. While small, single-room displays were set up in the 1990s, the first major ‘Western’ style museum opened at Ladakh’s largest monastery, Hemis, in 2007. Monastery museums have been established in Ladakh for a range of reasons – protection, security and education, as well as to make money by attracting the increasing numbers of both domestic and international tourists. This chapter focuses on a particular case study – that of Chemrey monastery museum in Ladakh. It explores the role of the monks in devising the original museum display, which opened in 2009, as well as the collaboration between a team from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and the monastic community in developing a new gallery between 2017 and 2019. The chapter draws, in particular, on Christina F. Kreps’ work on comparative museology, by describing and analysing local Tibetan Buddhist practices of collections care and display.