Amritsar’s Partition Museum shortlisted for UK prize
The museum in Amritsar was inaugurated in August 2017 as the first and only partition museum in the world, housing oral histories, donated personal artefacts and archival material, dedicated to those who lost their lives or loved ones in the largest mass migration in human history.
The Partition Museum in Amritsar has been shortlisted for the 2020 Museums + Heritage Awards for its 2019 collaborative exhibition ‘Jallianwala Bagh 1919: Punjab Under Siege’ with the Manchester Museum, organisers of the exhibition said on Saturday.
The joint project has been short-listed under the category of ‘International Project of the Year < £1M’. The London-based Museums + Heritage Awards celebrate the very best within museums, galleries and heritage visitor attractions for over 10 years.
The award function will take place virtually on September 22 out of London, a joint statement from the Partition Museum and the Manchester Museum said.
The co-curated exhibition was the first time that two museums in cities affected by colonialism, Amritsar and Manchester, came together to re-examine the massacre that eventually brought about the end of the British empire.
The exhibition included archival and audio-visual material which shared the narrative of the massacre through eyewitness accounts, photographs and official documents. It coincided with the centenary of the massacre in April 2019, and the bicentenary commemorations for the Peterloo massacre.
“We are very excited to be shortlisted by the Museums + Heritage Awards Committee for our collaborative exhibition with the Manchester Museum. We continue our work to remember and commemorate local histories”, said Mallika Ahluwalia, curator of the Partition Museum.
The museum in Amritsar was founded by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust and inaugurated in August 2017 as the first and only partition museum in the world, housing oral histories, donated personal artefacts and archival material, dedicated to those who lost their lives or loved ones in the largest mass migration in human history.
Created through donations, the Partition Museum was awarded the Media, Arts and Culture Award at the second annual UK-India Awards 2018 in London. The Manchester Museum, part of the University of Manchester, opened in 1890 and is the UK’s largest university museum with a collection of about 4.5 million items from every continent.
