Women collectors of South Asia: gender, material culture and empire

女性收藏家和捐赠者在物品的数量和意义方面为世界各地的博物馆藏品做出了重大贡献，包括大英博物馆，但到目前为止还没有研究审查她们的动机、做法和网络。大英博物馆的南亚藏品提供了一个理想的案例研究，可以作为一个项目的基础，探索收藏和捐赠的性别性质，并帮助揭示帝国和后殖民背景下女性的作用。该项目将调查南亚大英博物馆和英国其他收藏品的女性收藏家和物质文化捐赠者的生活、收藏、活动、著作和网络。它将探索女性如何以及为什么收集文物，她们的动机是什么，她们如何获得关于她们收藏的知识，以及她们向博物馆捐赠文物的动态。该项目以来自南亚的物品为起点，将以殖民和/或后殖民背景为背景，在此期间，南亚、英国和后来的英国南亚妇女协商在大英帝国及其后果下生活的挑战。它将对我们理解大英博物馆做出重要的原创贡献，展示种族、性别和帝国如何影响收藏品的锻造。它将质疑收集和参与物质文化在多大程度上是女性建立自己的网络的一种手段，以及这些如何与帝国和后帝国背景下的种族和社会鸿沟相一致或提出挑战。以大英博物馆为起点，它将追溯选定女性的生活及其收藏品，并向BM和其他博物馆捐赠。将研究物品本身以及大英博物馆和其他博物馆收藏的相关档案材料。个人文件和出版物将进一步阐明妇女收集和捐赠的方式、她们在其中采取行动的网络、协助她们的中介机构以及这些知识是如何传播的。这是一个及时的项目，因为性别和物质文化对我们理解帝国历史越来越重要，它将在将女性置于博物馆收藏品历史中心方面开辟新的天地。

Women collectors and donors have made major contributions in terms of quantity and significance of objects to the museum collections across the world, including the British Museum, yet there has been no study thus far which examines their motivations, practices and networks. The South Asian collections at the British Museum provide an ideal case study around which to base a project exploring the gendered nature of collecting and donating as well as helping to reveal the agency of women in imperial and post-colonial contexts. This project will investigate the lives, collections, activities, writings and networks of women collectors and donors of material culture from South Asia to the British Museum and other collections in the UK. It will explore how and why women collected objects and what motivated them, how they acquired knowledge about their collections and the dynamics of their donation of objects to museums. With a focus on objects from South Asia as the starting point, the project will be set in a colonial and/or post-colonial context, during which South Asian, British and later British South Asian women negotiated the challenges of living under the British Empire and its aftermath. It will make an important and original contribution to our understanding of the British Museum, demonstrating how race, gender and empire influenced the forging of the collection. It will question how far collecting and engagement with material culture was a means for women to establish their own networks and how these aligned with or challenged racial and social divides in imperial and post-imperial settings. Using the British Museum as a starting point, it will trace the lives of selected women and their collections and donations to the BM as well as other museums. Objects themselves will be studied as well as associated archival material in the British Museum and other museum collections. Personal papers and publications will shed further light on the way in which women collected and donated, the networks within which they acted, intermediaries who assisted them and how this knowledge was disseminated. This is a timely project, as gender and material culture are increasingly central to our understanding of imperial history and it will break new ground in positioning women at the centre of the history of the museum collections.