HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY - CLUSTER OF EXCELLENCE “EUROPE AND ASIA”

SEMINAR “CURATING IN A GLOBALLY CONNECTED ART WORLD”

(PROFESSOR DR. MONICA JUNEJA)

THE MAKING OF AN OPEN-AIR

VILLAGE MUSEUM IN INDIA:
THE EXAMPLE OF DAKSHINACITRA

LARA SCAIOLA
MA SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES

WINTER SEMESTER 2017-2018

A museum typology that today enjoys much popularity among the repertoire of global heritage forms is the
open-air museum, an institutional space for the re-location of vernacular or historical buildings allegedly
threatened in their original locations. In line with the rise of pluralist concepts of heritage, the last three
decades saw a mushrooming of open-air museums around the globe, anywhere with specific inflections. The
present essay is concerned with the form and function of this museum typology in India as exemplified by the
heritage village of DakshinaChitra, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Its mission is to preserve and promote
the traditional cultures of South India through the valorisation of their vernacular expressions. After
presenting the institution, I will highlight some elements of strength and weakness that I individuated during
my visit and confront it with the available literature. By focusing on the re-contextualisation of vernacular
architecture and the narrative attached to it, I will also address issues of representation and interpretation
crucial to museum studies today. My aim is to unpack and discuss some of the curatorial strategies and analyse
them in relation to the global trends in museum practices.

Introduction: remapping heritage and museums

The contemporary interest in community-based museums stands at the confluence of two critical
debates that have shaped much of the global discourse on cultural forms in the last decades: the
preoccupation with the conservation of cultural heritage and the role of the museum as a social agent.
UNESCO defines cultural heritage as “the legacy of physical artefacts and intangible attributes of a
group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for
the benefit of future generations”.1 Thus, as a form of inheritance, heritage encompasses the sense of
place, identity, and belonging, while providing a basin for individual and collective memories
(Hoelscher 2011, 200). Until the mid-70s, heritage studies focused almost exclusively on the material
fabric of sites and objects, with a deep emphasis on the ideals of artistry, authenticity, and material
integrity – along with the obedience to the imperative of “conserve as found”.2 In the last decades, on
the wave of post-modernist and post-colonialist thought, scholars and institutions began questioning
the universal applicability of such a monument-centric approach (Blake 2016; Daly and Winter 2012;
Silberman 2016), which Laura Smith (2010) dubbed as the Western “hegemonic and authorized
discourse on heritage”.3 The growing interest towards popular and indigenous systems of knowledge
- embodied in the vernacular architecture, performing arts, oral expressions, craftmanship, and
ecological expertise of communities - justified the inclusion of intangible cultural forms in the

1
See http://www.unesco.org/new/en/cairo/culture/tangible-cultural-heritage/. Accessed 12.05.2018.
2
As expressed in the Venice Charter (1964) and the first UNESCO Convention (1972).
3
Smith explains that the “heritage discourse” is “a cultural practice, involved in the construction and regulation of a
range of values and understandings”, relative to the use of the past in legitimating present claims (2010: 11).

1
category of heritage (Silberman 2016).4 In this view, heritage is conceptualized in relation to its
producers and practitioners rather than in terms of the final product (Alivizatou 2012, 35). Thus, the
paradigms of conservation and management arose in response promoted the involvement of
communities in heritage preservation and the revitalization of living cultural landscapes through
sustainable practices (Fong 2012; Poulios 2014; Smith 2010).
Following these changes in perception, heritage emerged as a global phenomenon, more
democratic and dynamic in its premises than before but also more elusive, ambiguous, and open to
contestations (Hoelscher 2011). This had important consequences for cultural theory in general, and
for museum studies in particular. If heritage is a mode of cultural production created through objects,
images, events, and representations, then the museum, an institution traditionally concerned with the
care, preservation and public display of cultural property, is (one of) the privileged arenas for its
showcasing (Hoelscher 2011, 202). It became clear that the way heritage is made legible – in the case
of museum, through exhibition display - influences its spectrum of meanings and the conflicting
ways in which it may be interpreted by visitors. Through the process of de- and re- contextualization
operated by museum display, the objects are placed within a certain narrative, which may conform to
– or challenge - political, nationalist, or ethnic claims of any sort (Bouquet 2012, 120-123). It is
precisely the capacity of objectifying knowledge through classificatory strategies that distinguish
museums from other media and institutions.5 Thus, the modern museum appears to be inexplicably
enmeshed with issues of power, authority, and social control. The acknowledgement of the social and
political dimension inherent in museum practices prompted scholars and museum specialist to put
into discussion the conceptual basis of the institution and call for its radical renewal (Macdonald
2011, 2-4). This critical attitude, which can be epitomized as a shift from the idea of the museum “as
a container” to the idea of the museum “as an activity” and “as a site” (Bouquet 2012, 140; Lumley
1988, 1), was conceptualized by critic Peter Vergo in terms of “new museology”. Generally speaking,
it called for a re-orientation of museum goals and methods towards a major engagement with the civil
society, as opposed to the eminently administrative, educational, and conservational agenda of the
“old museology” (Janes 2009; Karp 1992). Karp (1992, 4-5) clarifies that the civil society consists of
diverse forms of organization (families, associations, educational and professional societies)
connected to each other by the movements of their member and collectively accountable for the

4
Landmarks of this new orientation were the Burra Charter (1979) and the Nara Document on Authenticity (1994).
They paved the way for a “value-based” approach grounded on the recognition of the culture-specific nature of
heritage values. The Convention for the safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) is the latest and most
comprehensive chart asserting these principles.
5
Tony Bennet (2006), for instance, points out that from a very early stage museums were able to impart “civic lessons”
by arranging things according to specific visual strategies.

2
creation of citizenship; museums do not exist outside, but inside this realm. Accordingly, key
concerns in the new museology discourse are the representation of subaltern or marginalized voices
in public displays, supported by politics of community-based participation and empowerment
(Corsane 2005; Simpson 2001); the creation of networks of collaboration with other public practices,
such as marketing and entertainment (Foley & McPherson 2000); the definition of the museum’s
position in relation to globalized forces, including the new media and the tourist industry (Rectanus
2011). The museum-visitor relationship was re-hauled with the idea that the viewer is an active agent
able to forge meanings within the exhibition (Fyfe & Ross 1996). As Karp explains (1992, 3), people
filter the ideas articulated in the display through “their prior experiences” and “culturally learned
beliefs”; therefore, the curatorial input only partly shapes the response of the viewer. 6 This accounts
for the various and often unexpected ways in which visitors may respond to the stimuli of an
exhibition (Dicks, 2000; 2016).
In conclusion, today the museum is acknowledged as a contested terrain, where a multiplicity of
voices, from the management of heritage resources to the fruition of heritage outputs, can be heard
(Corsane 2005). As Merike Lang puts it, “museums of the new century are not linear forwarders of
information but partners of discussion for their visitors and the whole society” (2010, 397).

The phenomenon of open-air museums

On account of these debates, museums moved towards a greater degree of self-criticism and
reflexivity, in line with their fully-fledged status as “essential forms through which to make
statements about history, identity, value, and place” (Kratz and Karp 2006, 4). From the early 1990s,
a significant diversification in the museum landscape took place, due both to the rehauling of
established templates of display in older museums and the creation of new museological realities
across the globe. Among these, eco-museums and open-air museums constitute a conspicuous group.
Commonly national or regional in focus, they share an interest towards the patrimony of the “common
people” but substantially differ in the organizational template and in the degree of community
involvement they endorse. Eco-museums are usually small, community-based institutions supporting
the empowerment of local stakeholders by including them in the processes of decision-making at any
level of museum management (Borrelli and Davis 2012). Focusing on the sustainable preservation
and revitalization of cultural and natural local resources in-situ, they aim at raising people’s awareness
towards the value of territorial capital and encouraging the collaboration between local stakeholders

6
Bourdieu’s notion of “habitus” has been often invoked to explain the interpretative process. For a thorough analysis,
see Dick 2016.

3
and local authorities. The eco-museum philosophy advocates the preservation of the tangible assets
in their original locations as a vital part of the cultural landscape while emphasizing the continuation
between past and present practices. Open-air museums, on the other hand, operate in a quite opposite
direction: they bring the place into the museum, by re-locating material evidences of popular culture
allegedly threatened with destruction into a central facility.7 Variously known as heritage villages,
living history museums, and folk parks, they intend to re-create vanished (or vanishing) contexts of
human life through the re-adaptation and display of vernacular buildings in artificial landscape
settings. These are often complemented by exhibitions of regional material culture, performances of
traditional arts and crafts, and staging of life scenes – a modality dubbed as “living history”.8
Communities, when involved, are mainly engaged with building-related operations or with the
animation of the village: it is not rare to see artisans at work or tableaux vivants reproducing typical
domestic situations. Although the first exemplary of an open-air folk museum dates back to the end
of the 19th century,9 what I am discussing here are its modern incarnations, which Bella Dicks ascribes
to a “vernacularizing turn” in urban cultural display (2000, 62) coinciding with the consolidation of
pluralist concepts of heritage; they are indeed sites where the entanglement of heritage values and
museum practice is crucial.
As per definition, vernacular architecture is built with locally available resources by architects
who are not textually trained, their expertise relying on informal learning from direct experience
(Santra and Kisku 2017). The world vernaculars bear the imprint of the local cultures and reflect
peoples’ adaptation to the environmental and the historical conditions of a particular place. For this
reason, they are counted among the intangible manifestations of human culture to be preserved for
posterity. Although these traditions still hold strong in many rural and suburban areas of the world,
the advent of new technologies and the ready availability of industrial materials for construction are
a deterrent for people to uphold the traditional methods – notwithstanding their higher ecological and
functional aptness. Open-air museums claim they can provide an ideal environment to preserve the
specimens of vernaculars, together with the set of skills and knowledge they embed. Nonetheless,
they have been much criticized for the practice of removing the material evidences from their contexts

7
There are few exceptions. For example, the Colonial Williamsburg (Virginia) restored and partly recreated the
historical buildings in-situ.
8
For a complete account, see Magelssen 2007.
9
The Swedish open-air museum of Skansen, founded in 1891, was the first public institution to ever display rural
material culture and stage realistic scene of daily life. In a few decades, many similar institutions appeared in other
European countries and in the US (Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, Old Sturbridge Village). The glorification
of folk culture at the end of the 19th century was directly linked to the project of creating a sense of national
identification by the urban elites, which looked at the past with a gaze of romantic nostalgia (Bouquet 2012: 128-
129).

4
in order to “set them up in safe and sanitized parks” (Chappell 1999, 334). An intervention that is not
without risk, for it might result in the loss of the distinctive character and even of the material integrity
of the structures. Many authors, as I will argue later, are critical of the “television realism” underlying
the aesthetics of outdoor museums, for it allegedly dismisses the problematization of the historical
processes in favour of a backward-looking and nostalgic drive towards the past (Lumley 1988, 12-
13). Moreover, the “synthetic landscapes” of open-air museums, owing to their monumentality, are
fixed and thus flawed with the impossibility of being changed - unlike traditional displays - to reflect
changes in scholarship, social concerns, and pubic taste (Mills 2000, 90). On a more positive note,
Merike Lang, using a concept of Pierre Nora, assimilates them to lieux de memories, “landscapes of
memory”, endowed with the function of providing a point of reference for the entire society in virtue
of the archival function they serve (2010, 388).
In the last few decades the open-air museum template caught on in the Global South too, with a
high index of representation in the African and Asia-Pacific countries. Partly informed by the model
of the European-North American open-air museum, partly relying on cultural-specific modes of
presentation (Hitchcock, Stanley and Chung 2005), the outdoor museums in the Global South attracts
local and global tourists alike. Although fully embedded in the circuit of global capitalism (Hancock
2008: 714), the challenges these institutions have to face are often enmeshed with issues of national
pride, ethnic representativity, and post-colonialist emancipation. In this paper, I am concerned with
DakshinaChitra, a young outdoor museum in India I had the chance to visit during a trip to South
India.10 The promotional and descriptive material presents it as a “living museum” acting for “the
preservation and promotion of the culture of South India” (Narayanan 2001, 7; see also Thiagarajan
2010).11 Although the country is familiar to folk museums and community-based initiatives by
contemporary artists-activists, DakshinaChitra stands out as the first institution of this kind;12 it aims
at combining the thematic focus of the former while sharing the sustainable goals of the latter.
In what follows, I will deal with the curatorial choices of this museum keeping in mind the areas
of debate addressed by the new museology. My discussion is built upon three aspects that genuinely
sparkled my interest, whose relevance in the field of international museum studies is stated above:
the construction of narratives about past and memory; the modalities of display; the involvement of

10
My 2-days visit took place in March 2018.
11
“DakshinaChitra” literally means “vision, or image, of the South”. Located in the peninsular Deccan plateau, South
India encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and, since 2014, Telangana.
12
For example, the ethnographic village-museum of Shilpgram, Udaipur (Rajasthan), inaugurated in 2013, and the
HastaShilpa Heritage Village, Manipal (Karnataka), opened in 2016. A contemporary artist who engaged for years in
collaborative art projects with local communities is Navjot Altaf; see Nalpar and Pilla Gudi projects:
http://www.dialoguebastar.com/nalpar.html, accessed 20.05.2019.

5
local communities. To my knowledge, the only scholar who devoted considerable attention to this
museum is anthropologist and historian Mary Hancock, who wrote extensively about it on several
occasions (2002, 2008, 2009, 2015), anywhere expressing her scepticism towards what she considers
an elitarian and commercial project. Others have made references to DakshinaChitra in debates about
the pedagogic potential of craft museums (Sharma 2014), the sustainability of contemporary
architecture in India (Rademacher 2017) and the conservation of vernacular architecture in rural areas
(Hardgrove 2002). I shall argue that DakshinaChitra attempts to preserve and valorise the material
and immaterial dimension embedded in vernacular heritage, at the same time adopting the forms of
leisure and consumption dominant in modern India. However, despite the excellent care devoted to
the conservation and display of the structures, I shall provide evidence of the fact that the museum
does not fully acknowledge the importance of contextualizing the objects in the past as in the present
in an adequate manner for the socio-cultural reality of South Asia. As I hope to show, this case study
provides an interesting example to envision how issues of curatorship and museum management may
apply to the rather uncharted scenario of contemporary South Asian museology.

DakshinaChitra in context
The heritage village of DakshinaChitra is located in the outskirt of Chennai, capital of Tamil Nadu
and one of India’s fastest developing urban centres. A former colonial port, Chennai experienced a
tentacular expansion in the last two decades due to the prompt implementation of the New Industrial
policy of 1991. With its focus on decentralization and privatization, the set of economic reforms
paved the way to an industrial growth that left a deep footprint on the social and geographic landscape
of the city. One of the palpable outcomes of this process was the emergence of a “peri-urban fringe”,
a transitional zone between the rural hinterland and the urban core engendered by the penetration of
the city activities and enterprises into the villages outside the municipal boundaries (Hancock 2008,
10-11). The sprawling areas running from the Southern edge of Chennai to the touristy centre of
Mahabalipuram have been allotted to formal sector activities, in a process of formalization aimed at
making the city more accessible and appetible to both tourists and investors. This new “industrial
corridor” today hosts gated residences, malls, resorts, theme parks, and technology campuses, all
intended to favour the urban industry and promote middle-class consumerism (Hancock 2008, 45-
46). It is along this channel, around 25 km south of Chennai on the East Coast Road, that
DakshinaChitra is situated. Opened in 1996, the institution is a project of the Madras Craft Foundation
(MCF), a Chennai-based non-profit NGO for sustainable development. President of the MCF and
founder of the centre is Dr. Deborah Thiagarajan, a US scholar who lives and works in Tamil Nadu.
She declared that her extensive visits across the Indian countryside, in a time where village life was

6
undergoing profound transformations, urged her to involve first-hand for the safeguarding of the
vernaculars (Thiagarajan 2010). Since the late 80s, she resolved to buy and re-allocate, with the help
of a team of experts, a few ancestral houses left empty and meant for demolition after their owners
had moved to the city. The MCF could obtain the land on a 33-years lease from the Government of
Tamil Nadu and relied on donations of public patrons and private donors for the sustainment of the
project. The whole enterprise is “about remembering our roots and celebrating our inner creativity
and strength . . . and about beauty, tradition, innovation, and the confluence and continuing evolution
of our culture”, says the MCF booklet (Narayan 2001, 6).
The masterplan for DakshinaChitra was designed by architect Laurie Baker, since long time
involved in projects for the revitalization of Indian architectural traditions. The complex has grown
over time under the supervision of site’s architect Benny Kuriakose, Baker’s associate, and today
comprises a total of eighteen specimen of domestic architecture, plus a crafts bazaar, an amphitheatre,
a souvenir shop, a guesthouse, a gallery for contemporary art, and a research centre endowed with a
well-furnished library. In line with the sought profile of an international cultural institution, the
museum offers a full range of complementary activities, such as workshops, concerts, temporary
exhibitions, seminars, and special thematic events. Craft artisans are at the disposal of the visitors to
teach and explain their ancestral knowledge in craft making, and the amphitheatre regularly hosts
dance and music performances by professional artists. In this way, the museum wishes to “distillate”
the collective wisdom of the people of South India to make it known to the world and, ideally, to store
it for the future (Narayanan 2007, 7).
Eleven of the vernacular buildings at DakshinaChitra are original houses spanning from the late-
eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, which have been transplanted from the original sites and re-
located in harmony with their spatial syntax and functional principles; the remaining are faithful
replicas of templates spread across the South. The houses are arranged in blocks as to form four
distinct spatial and conceptual units, identifiable with the ethnic and linguistic states of the South
(Fig. 1).13 The plaques in the houses instruct the visitors about the history of the constructions, their
position in the socio-economic and ecological context of the region, and their prominent spatial and
stylistic features. The groups are organized as follows:

▪ Tamil Nadu: the Chettinad House and the Weaver’s House (Kanchipuram), both reconstructed
with some original parts and some replications; the Agriculturist’s House (Mayavaram), the
Potter’s House (Thiruvallur), the Mud House (replica), the Basket Weavers’ House (replica);

13
Telangana was still part of the State of Andhra Pradesh when DakshinaChitra first opened in 1996. In virtue of the
strong cultural ties and linguistic affinity of the two states, their representative houses were left grouped together.

7
 the Brahmin House (Ambur), relocated within a re-constructed agraharam (Fig. 2);14 a newly
built shrine devoted to the village god Ayyanar. Designed by Baker are the Textile Exhibition
Hall and the Chariot Hall.
▪ Kerala: the Syrian Christian’s house (Kottayam); two Hindu houses, from South Kerala
(Trivandrum) and North Kerala (Calicut), both original but with some missing parts; a Granary
and Cowshed (Kottayam). The book informs that the MCF has been trying, unsuccessfully, to
relocate also a Muslim house.
▪ Karnataka: a cluster of Weavers’ Houses (Ilkal); the Muslim Trader’s House (Chikmagalur).
More structures are likely to be added.
▪ Andhra Pradesh and Telangana: the Weavers’ House (Nalgonda district), Telangana; the
Chuttilu House (Haripuram), Coastal Andhra. In this section too, new houses are expected to
be added.

Besides the relocation of traditional structures, Baker’s project comprehended the erection of new
buildings of public use inspired to the principles of the vernaculars. DakshinaChitra was therefore
designed as a space to bring together the evidences of the domestic vernaculars and their modern
interpretations. The few publications that deal with DakshinaChitra do not, in my opinion, give
enough relevance to the link between the philosophy of Baker and the realization of the MCF’s
project. This might be due to the fact that Baker did not contribute personally to the implementation
of the project, which he left to Benny Kuriakose. I believe that to fully understand the aims of
DakshinaChitra in documenting architecture we should first turn to the ideas of its mastermind. I will
outline them briefly and will refer to them throughout the discussion when relevant.

An idea of sustainability
“We can study the many and varied components of Indian architectural design and find out
what makes them essentially and intriguingly Indian. Only then can we create an Indian-ness
into all our materials and designing. Then our modern “Indian” architecture will be a
continuing, growing, crowning glory to our great heritage”15

This is how in 1983 the British-born Indian architect Laurie Baker (1917-2007)16 expressed his
position about the revival of traditional architecture in India, after he had already spent almost four

14
Temple street form common in the South of Tamil Nadu.
15
Laurie Baker quoted by Bhatia, 1991, 244.
16Laurie Baker, trained as an architect in the UK, moved to India after World War II as a professionist at the service
of some humanitarian missions. Before establishing his studio and house in Kerala, he worked for many years in
Himachal Pradesh with local builders.

8
decades in the country learning the practice from local artisans. They taught him the principles of
ecological sustainability and cost-effectiveness that would have substantiated his professional activity
in South Asia. He devoted his entire career to the development of a “contemporary vernacular”,
intended as an architectural idiom that would make use of “a commonly observed, felt and accepted
language of building (…) transformed to suit the new requirements” (Bhatia 1991, 17). Baker
designed more than a thousand buildings, ranging from governmental infrastructures, to churches, to
private accommodations - mostly in Kerala, where he lived and worked. 17 In these, he made large
use of the architectural elements characteristic of the regional vernaculars, such as the arches, the
sloping roofs, the terracotta tiles, and the perforated brick screens. He firmly believed in the exclusive
use of locally available materials, and often quoted Gandhi’s statement that “a man should build with
materials found within a five miles radar from his house” as his guiding principle in the selection of
the materials (Bhatia 1991, 59). The brick jalis, a reminiscence of the stone-carved jalis and
benchmark of his style, are exemplary in this sense: they are made of mud, a widely available and
low-cost material, and their structure is thought to ensure proper ventilation and shading in the
tropical climate without using expensive glasses (Fig. 3). He also believed in minimizing the impact
of construction on the building sites and in the necessity of merging the architecture with the ecology
of the territory. With this, he attempted to restore the harmony between nature and technology typical
of vernacular practices, which the policy of mass-housing and the new industrial economy of modern
India had neglected.
For DakshinaChitra, Baker designed the masterplan and the structures of public use, which were
to serve as the “backbones” of the complex: the reception, the artisans’ centre, and the visitors’
guesthouse. He was well aware of the fact that traditional houses needed a proper “frame” in a
museum context: a set of modern buildings, inspired to the same principles of the former, that could
dialogue with the evidences of tradition. The architecture of the common spaces, featuring low roofs
and divided courtyards (Fig. 4), gives an intimate quality in keeping with the domestic architecture
of DakshinaChitra (Narayanan 2007, 23); the structures also incorporate elements of re-use, such as
doors and windows, from older Tamil houses. Baker’s footprint in the finite complex is a strong
statement against the sterility of commercial housing, lacking any sense of corporate, regional, or
historic identity, which were sold in Chennai as in other industrialized urban centres as mere
commodities. In what follows, I will comment on the modes the museum adopted to implement the
project after Baker’s masterplan, with particular emphasis on the relationship between architecture,
object display, and narrative frames.

17
For example, the Children’s Village near Nagercoil, Tamilnadu (1965); the Centre for Development Studies (1971)
and the Indian Coffee House (1974), both in Trivandrum, Kerala; the Fishermen’s Village in Poonthura, Kerala (1974).

9
 People and things
Laurie Baker’s activity was much inspired by the Gandhian principle of self-sufficiency, for which
post-Independence India could aspire to grow in harmony with its traditions and autonomously
through the revitalization of local crafts and cottage industries (Bhatia 1991, 15). In this discourse,
traditional craftmanship embeds that “Indian-ness” which Baker sought to distil in architecture by
experimenting with the modern vernaculars. Although the establishment of a village-centric society
appears today as a political utopia, the necessity of adopting measures to prevent the decline of
artisanal professions in India has been widely acknowledged. The transformations occurred in the
modes of agricultural productions in the neoliberalist era have significantly impinged the livelihood
of traditional artisans. Confronted with the exponential growth of industrial manufacture, craftsmen
face today the challenge of “remaining contemporarily relevant” at a social, cultural, and economic
level (Palanithurai & Ramesh 2008). For instance, the figure of the traditional architect, or shilpi,18 is
being gradually replaced by that of the professional engineer, and the use of industrial materials is
eclipsing the traditional expertise in wood and stone carving (Palanithurai & Ramesh 2008, 221). A
merit of DakshinaChitra is certainly to have understood the need of documenting the forms of
traditional knowledge detained by the South Indian shilpis by actively involving them in the project
(Thiagarajan 2010: 76). Traditional building exponents from the five southern states were hired for
the de- and re-construction of the houses. While the members of the new generations would take care
of the material operations, the older carpenters – their fathers and grandfathers - provided the
solutions to the problems of adaptation and re-use arose during the transplantation (Narayanan 2007,
79). As Cody and Fong write (2012), for the diminishing craft traditions in Asia to be revitalized, it
is essential to counter react to the dispersal of knowledge by documenting the artisans' activity and
making their skills available to wider groups of people. The collections of artefacts that museums
preserve are not just material evidences: they are a form of visual documentation, for they embed the
artistic and technological skills of the people who produced them (Fig. 5). The study of these objects,
as their restoration and reproduction, affords the knowledge they embed to survive (Simpson 2001,
248-249). Vernacular architecture is a living practice, dependent on the expertise handed down from
generation to generation within the community. Preserving the vernaculars with the involvement of
skilled traditional builders implies ensuring the continuation of such forms of knowledge. For this

18
The Indian tradition distinguishes between two categories of craftsmen: the shilpis, builders, and the artisans of the
panchalas, the five primary crafts employing wood, gold, iron and all the other metals. For reasons of space I cannot
deal here with the wider issue of the empowerment of the craft artisans through the participation in the museum
commercial space.

10
reason, we can say that DakshinaChitra did more than “acquiring fragments of places” for the sake
of display – a critic often due to open-air museums (Grunter 2017, 261): it has created a visual archive
of vernaculars for researchers and practitioners alike. Mary Hancock is nonetheless critical of the
modality of salvage and re-use of old building stock, claiming that “the disassembly, transport, and
re-assembly of a building are profound dis-locations” which contravene the commitment to the
authenticity of forms and materials (2008, 703). She also comments negatively on the interpolation
of modern materials to enhance the durability of the structures and on the operations of selective
adaptivity performed on some of them. However, one has to keep in mind that the museum space, as
such, has certain exigencies, among which eliciting the circulation of visitors, and that compromises
must be sought to accommodate the objects and the purpose for which the objects are displayed. At
DakshinaChitra, when possible, the houses have been transplanted without intervening on the
material fabric and the original assemblage of parts. The MCF booklet explains that the study of
village layout variations enabled the teams to shorten or omit sections of the houses that could not be
accommodated in their entirety due to space constraints (Narayana 2007: 11). Alternatively, pieces
taken from distinct, yet affine structures have been assembled into a single building. For example, the
Chettinad House (Tamil Nadu) was re-created by means of assemblage following the standard
blueprint of a Nattukkottai Chettiars’ house of the late 19th century (Fig. 6).19 The outside wooden
veranda and the central courtyard, derived from a house in Aryakudi, were combined with the door
and inner veranda of a Kandanur house; the exterior façade is a replica of a common prototype, made
with entirely new materials; a few small double rooms and the innermost kitchen courtyard have been
omitted for reasons of space. Notwithstanding this, the characteristics of the Chettinad style, such as
the integration of craft and architecture, the wealth of decoration, and the appreciation for the open
spaces are unaltered. The spatial syntax too, with the compartmentation of shared and private spaces
in which the microcosm of the extended patrilinear family unfolds, is clearly recognizable. As for the
use of new material, this should not be considered a priori like a “falsification”. For example, for the
construction ex novo of the Basket Weavers’ House (Tamil Nadu), the team opted for testing the
technique of compressed mud block, while remaining true to the plan of the prototype. Albeit the
latter is a modern, mechanical way of manipulating materials, it is also an inexpensive, durable and
easy alternative to traditional methods (Narayanan 2007: 37). Its application in this context is

19
Chettinad is the name of a region encompassing the present-day districts of Pudukkottai and SivaGanga, where
th th
the Chettiars, a cast-based community of rich merchants, built most of their houses during the 19 and early 20
centuries. The basic design consists of a central courtyard with an outer veranda for public use backing a series of
smaller courtyards on which private rooms open up; each constitutes the space of a single nuclear family within the
larger joint family space (Hradgrove 2002). Most of these once-much-lavished houses are today in a state of
abandonment, with only a few restored and opened to the public.

11
important because it testifies that the museum has enlarged his scope, from mere preservation/display
to the elaboration of concrete solutions for reviving the vernaculars in today’s villages. If one
considers that the governmental institutions, in India as in other developing countries, are scarcely
able to develop appropriate housing schemes on account of the general lack of knowledge about the
cultural utilization, value and management of space (Santa 2017: 283), then the contribution of the
museum in finding possible solutions to ameliorate the building standards must be evaluated very
positively. This accomplishment is surely in line with Baker’s philosophy and is a decisive step
towards the museum becoming a provider of services for the benefit of the community. Together with
the thorough conservation works and the implementations of the principles of ecological
sustainability, it shows that the museum has successfully pursued the goal of valorising and
revitalizing the material vernaculars. However, there is another factor to keep in account to judge to
what extent the institution is being true to its mission: the narrative frame built around this rich
architectural heritage. DakshinaChitra is not only about architecture, but also about the people who
developed and inhabited that architecture (Narayanan 2007, 8). Let me now move on and spend a few
words on the strategies of representation that the museum employs in this regard.

Narratives and frames

We all engage in remembering, but “ours is the world of particular perspectives (…) while the
museum’s is that of an authorized agent” (Dicks 2016, 53). The sustainment of adequate politics of
memory and remembrance is a challenging task for museums in the 21st century. Hancock believes
that DakshinaChitra premises on the triumph of a “neoliberal nostalgia” that allegedly reflects the
affective gaze of the cosmopolitan elites – main consumers of the space - towards a past “lost in the
process of neoliberal globalisation” (185-186, 201). She goes one specifying that “memory,
objectified as heritage and mediated in tourism, is produced in Chennai (…) as a marketable legacy
of objects, knowledges, relations, and spaces”. For her, the recourse to romantic nostalgia is in
contradiction with the commercial and service-oriented vocation of the museum, which would exist
only in virtue of those transformations in the socio-economic life that it laments. Her critique touches
upon three aspects, involving both the ideological and material dimensions of the museum: the
sentimentalization of the past, the gentrification of heritage, and the trivialization of cultural
properties operated by the tourist industry.
Hancock’s first claim falls within a much wider debate on the modes of transmission and
articulation of cultural memory in the present. Many have criticized heritage museums for the
allegedly beautified, uncritical representation of the past they offer. Linda Young argues that the
concept of the village applied to groups of transplanted buildings is “artificial and unhistorical”

12
because it assumes proximity and affinity between structures that never co-existed in reality (2006,
330); to her, it is a “convincing theatre” for the staging of living history, which becomes, in turn, “a
totalising medium of heritage interpretation” (2006, 323). Lumley (1988: 12) argues that ethnology
and ethnohistory in museums have the power of “pacifying and neutralizing” living history by
silencing its active components, i.e. the conflicts, interests, resistances, illusions, and material events
that shape its course; in this way, they would obscure the consciousness of the historical process and
condensate the complexity of the past into a “timeless and unquestioned moment”. Such an
unproblematic representation of the past becomes a comfortable space to play out that consolatory
“nostalgia” which Lowenthal advocates as the expression of the post-modern sentiment of distress.
He says: “the richly elaborated past seems more familiar (…) for the here and now lacks the felt
density and completeness of what time has filtered and ordered” (1985, 4). At DakshinaChitra, the
trope of nostalgia has a specific overtone: the ideal of village life (Hancock 2008, 2015). In India the
village occupies a central place in the popular imagination as a social and cultural unity signifier of
“native life”. That the concept of the village has an ideological character is clear from the way it was
variously instrumentalized in the political discourses of Gandhi, Nehru, and Ambedkar during the
battle for independence, as well as the way the new political regime made use of it in the rhetoric of
national development (Jodhka 2012, 15). In the background of these debates is the binary construction
of the “city” and the “village” that has long informed the social sciences, whereby these notions
identify not merely two settlement forms but two different types of social formations, organized
around a different type of economy, culture, and normative order (Jodhka 2012: 1). However, whereas
the urban space is always connoted in terms of vivacity and plurality, the village tends to be portrayed
as a timeless and unchanging entity, characterized by a static system of relations. These stereotyped
images, says Thakur, “coalesce into the image of a typical, generic village, turning all the villages
into the village” (2014, 10). At DakshinaChitra, the discourse built around the collection tends to
crystallize this worldview. Overall, curators gave great emphasis to the way the different regional
ecologies shaped the vernacular traditions but failed to put in evidence how these traditions are
embedded in the socio-economic structures of the villages at large. Edward Chappell rightly points
out that vernacular architecture in outdoor museums could be an effective medium to teach public
history, provided that the former is presented “in terms of cultural, social and historical issues rather
simply as heritage” (2007, 3) – a critic that I will extend to the display of domestic material culture
in the following paragraph. Although DakshinaChitra attempts to focus on the house as a microcosm
of relations, these are never satisfactorily investigated, nor analysed in the wider context of communal

13
life.20 Therefore, critical issues such as cast hierarchy are only superficially tackled, while other
thorny social matters that the literature about village stresses, for example that of untouchability
(Jodhka 2012), are totally glossed over. As Anna Rademacher notices, DakshinaChitra “bundles the
structures together as a set of politically neutral, regionally representative examples of good design”
(2017, 113). This approach is problematic that it fails to acknowledge the single villages as
historically determined socio-cultural realities, thus reducing them to stereotyped depositaries of
“traditional wisdom and spirituality, harmony of nature, and intact communal life” (Thakur 2014,
18). In a second place, by assuming that villages are necessarily located in the past (Thakur 2014,
12), it segregates them in a socially and temporally distant universe. This does not reflect the reality
of facts. As Jodhka (2012) reports, even in the aftermath of the massive waves of rural-urban
migrations, two thirds of the total population of India continues living in villages, with the remaining
segment still retaining links of some sort with them. While in the West the processes of
industrialization and urbanization, in the background of which open-air museum create a restorative
memory of the past, have caused the desertion of villages, in India they are still a thriving reality.
DakshinaChitra seems to conform to the modes of narration of Western outdoor museums, oriented
to the re-evocation of a lost past, which are nonetheless inconsistent with the socio-cultural reality of
the Indian subcontinent. While acknowledging the transformation of the village unit - which is, in a
way, the very reason why the institution exists – the museum insists in placing it outside the time and
space of Indian modernity. By presenting them in an idealized and temporally undetermined frame,
DakshinaChitra ends up recreating “a sanitized simulacrum of South Indian past” (Hancock 2015,
200). Therefore, the dialogue between modernity and tradition that DakshinaChitra set up in
architecture, which I have discussed above, is not sustained by the narrative around the spaces and
the objects. While the architectural assemblage and the philosophies it underlays points at a continuity
between past and present - the “village of then” and “the village of today” - the narrative frame
romanticizes pre-modern ways of life and implicitly laments and asserts their not-replicability in the
present. If, as founder Deborah Thiagarajan professed, the aim is to stimulate an appreciation for
living cultural forms (Hancock 2002: 696), showing artisans at work or re-enacting folk performances
is not enough to this purpose. The museum should rather work to unveil the ideological manipulations
of the idea of the village, reclaim its historicity and, most importantly, turn the attention to its modern
articulation (Thakur 2014, 18). This does not mean that it must abstain from the interpretation of the
historical evidences; that is just one stage of a process that should ultimately aim at engaging with
the contemporary realities of rural settlements.

20
As I shall argue in the next paragraph, this is due also to the way the objects of material culture within the household
context are treated.

14
 On a totally different note, Hancock’s insistence on the elitarian character of the exhibitionary
modes and communication templates is arguable. The circuit nationalism-consumerism-leisure
embedded in the logic of the open-air museum is in modern India a feature of contemporary life for
important segments of the population (Appadurai & Breckenridge 2015, 180). Museums are part of
an “exhibitionary complex” of experiences characterized by the synergic appeal to “visual pleasure,
ethnic and national display, and consumer appetite” (2015, 178). Drawing from the models of the
exhibition-cum-sale and the ethnic-national festivals, these cultural manifestations are fully
embedded in public culture and cut across class and cast boundaries. The leisure-oriented template
DakshinaChitra employs is locally and globally relevant and must be seen as an outcome of the
expansion of the museum spectrum of functions at an international level. In this, community outreach
and education merge with consumption and entertainment, becoming part of what Rectanus calls a
global “event culture” (2011, 384). The “commodification of folk life” effected by the consumerist
orientation open-air museums worldwide is indeed a new, significant global economic force
(Chappell 2007, 4). This could not be otherwise, since the appreciation for heritage has grown in
tandem with the soaring of the tourist industry (Foley & McPherson 2000). The new mixed cultural
economy of museums, combining curatorial and managerial values and education with leisure, re-
configured them as primary tourist attraction, as such appetible to wider groups of people than the
connoisseurs (Foley & McPherson 2000, 171). Dakshinacitra, as a complex designed for education,
research, leisure, heritage promotion, and commerce, exemplifies the global shift of museums
towards democratization and consumption (Fig 7 & 8).

Architecture and material culture

As a last point, I would like to turn the attention to an eminently curatorial aspect that the literature
about DakshinaChitra has not tackled: the manipulation of the interiors of the houses. There is no
uniformity in the solutions curators adopted to employ the spare space. In some cases, household
objects and mannequins fill up the rooms, as to recreate the sense of the environment “being lived
in”. A few houses host museum-like galleries of objects or multimedia exhibitions meant to provide
a glimpse of the heritage of South India, thus turning themselves into self-enclosed, small-scale
museums. Evidences of domestic architecture put in a museum context are already per se exhibition
objects for the technical, aesthetic, and social values they embed. When turned into exhibition spaces,
they are assigned a double function: constituting and containing the museum at the same time (Young
2007: 59).21 As I wish to show, such choice may prove problematic. I shall now give an account of

21
The convergence of object and subject in a single material evidence is a characteristic of historic house museums,
where buildings often come in a full-package with intact collections.

15
the different cases and comment on the patterns that emerge from such analysis, in the hope of
providing an in-depth overview of the museum space beyond the architectural space.

▪ Houses hosting temporal or permanent exhibitions.

The first house one comes across, the Chettinad House, accommodates two multimedia exhibitions
intended to familiarize the visitors with the cultural and natural ecology of Tamil Nadu. The first
occupies a spacious room in the right wing of the complex and illustrates the features of the five
Tamil eco-cultural zones through a selection of photographs, handcrafts, and fragments of classical
poetry (Fig. 9).22 Each section encapsulates in few objects and textual references the imagery
connected to the regional landscapes, with a strong emphasis on how the natural environment has
shaped the temperament, the activity, and the material culture of the people from time to time. The
second space, in the left wing, at the time of my visit hosted the exhibition “Textile Trade on the
Coromandel Coast”. Here the visitor can watch a short video illustrating the techniques of weaving
and block-printing on cloth and observe some specimens of the textiles traded across the region.
Although the exhibition is small and does not provide much background on the topic, it might serve
as a first introduction to traditional craftmanship, a theme that the viewer will encounter over and
over throughout the visit. Another pleasant and well set up, though small, exhibition is located in the
interiors of the Muslim Trader’s House (Karnataka). “A Shared Heritage” gazes at the multicultural
society of the Chikmagalur district,23 stressing the harmonious cooperation between the Hindu and
the Muslim communities (Fig. 10). A video installation at the entrance explains the role that spice
trade had in the creation of transcultural connections between India and Arabia, which eventually led
to the establishment of Muslim communities in coastal Karnataka; a silent video projection shows
images of Sufi saints and devotees. Unfolding along the corridor walls is a gallery of photographs
celebrating the Muslim architectural masterpieces of South India, while silk embroideries, Kalamkari
panels, and Bidri wares complete the furnishing. The interplay between audio-visual and material
evidences is well balanced, and the selection of objects fits the interiors without saturating them.
Overall, thanks to the recourse to mixed media, these exhibitions are successful in raising the visitor’s
curiosity and giving insights into some non-obvious cultural facets of South India.

▪ Houses displaying items without taxonomic organization.

22
The Sangam poetry is organized around seven thinais, or modes – five of which closely associated with a specific
landscape and ecological imagery: mountains (Kuṟunji), forests (Mullai), croplands (Marudam), seashore (Neydhal),
and wastelands (Palai).
23
http://dakshinachitra.net/the_chikmagalur_house, accessed 02.06.2018.

16
Most houses are furnished with objects belonging to the domestic sphere - photographs, kitchen
utensils, working tools, items of furniture – and (less frequently) mannequins staging real-life
situations, in this following a well-established format of folk outdoor museums. Such displays are
meant to increase the realism of the environment and give the visitors the sense of a “lived space”.
They do not usually come with labels or contextualization of any sort, serving a merely illustrative
purpose. Let’s take The Calicut House (Kerala): all rooms display a plethora of items, among which
a collection of lamps, cooking vessels, and objects used for Ayurvedic treatments. It is hard to learn
anything about the function and the meanings of the objects because of the lack of a proper
contextualization. They cannot instruct about the socio-economic structure underlying the household,
nor they can tell about the development of the material culture of the region. They surely endow the
environment with an atmosphere, but what else? Differently presented, such evidences might instead
have the potential of illuminating on the relationship between the domestic and the communal sphere,
the identity and the status of the householders, and the dynamics of place-making.

▪ Houses with museum-like collection of objects.

Representative of this typology is the Brahmin’s House (Tamil Nadu), which hosts a “Gallery of
Religious Arts” crowded with ritual paraphernalia, temple sculptures, processional items and other
religious objects (Fig. 11). The artefacts are arranged in a static manner, with only generic indications
- or no indications at all - regarding their historical period, provenience, and function. At best, some
objects bear iconographic descriptions. It is not clear whether the objects were part of the original
furniture or hail from other sources - and if so, how they got together in the first place. They are
grouped as per function (for example, “puja items”) without any further contextual explanation. Not
that differently from the case of household items, one comes across a mute series of objects that
cannot fulfil any educational function. Admittedly, the lack of contextualization, the application of
arbitrary categorical meanings, and the haphazard assemblage that flaw the display at DakshinaChitra
are common shortcomings of many Indian museums.24 One might argue that this is imputable to a
different conception of the taxonomic order than the Western one. However, we have to keep in mind
first, that this museum is the creation of a Western scholar, and second, that it does not suffer the type
of financial restriction public museums are subjected to, which can seriously impinge on the quality
of exhibitions.

24
A notable example in the region is the Padmanabhapuram Palace, in Kanyakumari district. In a way similar in focus
to DakshinaChitra – it is a magnificent example of Travancore architecture conserved in situ – it is unfortunately
spoiled by the haphazard display of objects in the rooms and in the two spaces designated as museums.

17
As Linda Young points out, houses are intricate objects, whose values encompass real estate, material
fabric, items of furnishing, domestic equipment, plus the human associations that grow or have grown
within them (Young 2007). In the attempt of making all these meanings explicit, curators at
DakshinaChitra adopted various strategies for the treatment of the interiors. While multimedia
thematic expositions are successful in combining aesthetic appeal and conceptual background, the
display of objects is a sore point. The proper contextualisation of material culture seems to be a matter
of minor interest to the curators. Can we claim for these objects a different role in the economy of the
display - one that does not reduce them to curiosity props to be distractedly gazed at?
First of all, we have seen that the objects are treated as ethnographic evidences. It is not possible
to address here the vexed issue of categories; it suffices to say that, for the purpose of this discussion,
I intend the ethnographic object – or rather, the ethnographic fragment, to say it with Kirshenblatt-
Gimblett (1991) – as one endowed with a metonymic nature, i.e. representative of a class of objects,
inherently multiple, documentary, and contingent, not intended to hold up to scrutiny as a single
creation (1991, 23-24). Vlach argues that traditional artefacts of this kind are first-order documents
for history-making – a democratic sort of history, insomuch as their “social nature” allows them to
speak for extensive segments of the population. However, they must be contextualized as such;
interpretation and exhibition are two sides of the same coin. The exhibition is a field in which three
distinct agents are active: the producer of the artefact, for the final product carries its socio-cultural
mark; the exhibitor, who acts as a cultural mediator; the museumgoer, for whom “cause finding” and
“visual appeal” stemming from the inspection of objects are an equal source of pleasure (Baxandall
1991). Curators should adequately bridge the gap between the former and the latter components of
the triad by establishing a channel of communication between the world in which the object was made
and the world of the viewer. Baxandall (1991) speaks of a very interesting strategy in this regard; he
believes that long, descriptive accounts do not pay in terms of learning gains by the audience as much
as the selection of few cultural facts relevant to the objects that allows the viewer to work out a
connection between what he sees and what he knows. In a word, a sufficient interpretation, leaving
much space of interpretation to the visitor, is to be preferred over an explicit interpretation (1991, 5).
The main challenge curators might face in this regard is to offer a fully satisfactory selection of
information for the Indian and the foreign visitors alike, who hold a different degree of knowledge of
the cultures on display. Understanding and learning from the artefacts in open-air museums is thus
possible, but not all of them have acknowledged this possibility yet. Therefore, curators who wish
architecture and material culture to act in synergy as educative tools should reconsider the way these
objects are displayed, presented, and prospected to the public.

18
 Conclusions:
Already in the late 80s, Lumley (1988) predicted the central role that museums would have taken up
in the debate on cultural forms at the turn of the 21st century, for their capability of mapping people’s
tastes and values and shaping the collective historical consciousness. “Museums and galleries are
potentially the most free and creative work environments on the planet”, reminds Janes (2009, 15),
who goes on asking whether the amass and display of ethnographic objects is enough to save those
ways of life that are threatened by the homologization of world cultures, and if museums should “be
content with celebrating lost diversity” or rather “be advocates and defenders of its preservation”
(2009, 49). The questions he asks is: “how museums can contribute to the stewardship of the
ethnosphere?” (2009, 36). I have argued that at DakshinaChitra the integration between the traditional
village vernaculars and Baker’s neo-vernacular has set in dialogue a rich vocabulary of forms,
showing the outpouring of the idioms of the past into the language of today’s architecture. The
transplantation and conservation of traditional houses has been scrupulously and methodically done,
with faithfulness to the principles of sustainability that architect Laurie Baker, the mind behind the
masterplan, wished to pursue. I have also argued that DakshinaChitra can serve as a repository of
models for the improvement of contemporary housing solutions in the face of a rapid population
expansion. Yet these outstanding achievements are not supported by a proper contextual framework.
A poor rhetoric about the vanishing past of village life, inconveniently mimicking that of Western
outdoor museums, underlays the display of buildings and domestic objects. DakshinaChitra should
establish a neat line between the memories of the past it wants to document and the factual reality of
the villages. This must pass through the re-hauling of the collections of domestic material culture
displayed in the houses as well as the setting of a different contextual frame around the architecture.
Villages still exist and thrive, but they are not – if they ever were - the self-sufficient and secluded
islands that the nationalist discourse celebrated. Therefore, the museum should re-visit the village
template it employs, moving from an uncritical use of the concept as a unifying backdrop for the sake
of architectural display to a critical exploration of the real and factual status of the villages as
historical products, embedded in a series of cultural and social networks. For its liminal location in
the peri-urban area of Chennai, DakshinaChitra can become a site where to explore the relationship
between the urban and the rural spaces, which in India is a matter of prime concern. It is an ambitious
prospect, but if DakshinaChitra really wants to be a museum for the people and of the people, it should
strive to become a laboratory for experimentation and change in every aspect, included the common
misrepresentation of cultural ideas and concepts.

19
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 Appendix

Figure 1. Map of DakshinaChitra.

Source: http://dakshinachitra.net/visit

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 Figure 2. Reconstructed agraharam from Southern Tamil Nadu.

Author’s photograph, 2018.

Figure 3. Laurie Baker’s Indian Coffee House, Trivandrum, Kerala (1974).

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorcasino/6015297878

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Figure 4. Reception at DakshinaChitra, design by Laurie Baker.
Source: http://www.archidust.com/Home/brand_details/Benny-Kuriakose

Figure 5. Detail of wooden carving. Hindu House

(Kerala), DakshinaChitra.
Author’s photo.

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 Figure 6. Front façade of the Chettiar (Merchant's) House
(Tamil Nadu), DakshinaChitra.
Source: http://udhaya.com/?p=932

Figure 7. Performance of Bharatanatyam, DakshinaChitra.

Author’s photograph.

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 Figure 8. Artisans’ Bazaar, DakshinaChitra.
Author’s photo.

Figure 9. Close up of the exhibition in the Chettiar (Merchant’s) House

(Tamil Nadu), DakshinaChitra.
Author’s photo.

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 Figure 10. Exhibition “A Shared Heritage”, Muslim Traders’ House
(Karnataka), DakshinaChitra.
Source: http://dakshinachitra.net/the_chikmagalur_house

Figure 11. Section of the “Gallery of Religious Arts”, the Brahmin’s House
(Tamil Nadu), DakshinaChitra.
Author’s photo.

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