The Tibet Museum attends 15th Seminar of the IATS

[Source: tibet.net]

Paris: Mr. Tashi Phuntsok, director of the Tibet Museum attended 15th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies (IATS) from July 7 to 13, 2019 at National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilization (INALCO), Paris, France.

During the seminar, Mr. Tashi Phuntsok and Dr. Emma Martin, Tibet curator for Liverpool Museum and advisor to new Tibet Museum project, co-presented the paper titled “(Re)Presenting Absence: Developing a Tibetan Museology in Exile” for panel titled “Re-narrating Tibetan Material Worlds: Other Ways of Reading Objects and Heritage.”

Mr. Tashi paper focuses on the development of new Tibet Museum in Gangchen Kyishong, the seat of Central Tibetan Administration. Through power-point presentation, he introduced the plan of the new museum and its 11 sections and spaces for temporary exhibition, auditorium and digital activities cum library. His paper also highlighted the importance of developing object-based museum and process and methods used for soliciting the objects from Tibetan communities in exile through Settlement Offices, collection tours and media campaign.

Dr. Emma paper reflected on the processes of museum collection, interpretation and display developed for the new Tibet Museum as a way to understand how absence is made present and tangible in this newly conceived museum project. She cited several objects recently collected for the new Tibet Museum as an examples of an innovative approach to collecting Tibet and as a way of recovering small or personal histories of exile.

Earlier, on July 6, 2019, coinciding with His Holiness the Dalai Lama Birthday Celebration in Antwerp, Belgium, Mr. Tashi Phuntsok addressed the gathering about the new Tibet Museum project and highlighted the importance of museum as a medium to raise awareness about Tibet’s history, culture and current situations in Tibet.

Dr. Emma Martin during her presentation at 15th Seminar of the IATS