Aftermath

From loss to rebuilding

In the Kathmandu Valley, the earthquake of 25 April 2015 destroyed or damaged hundreds of ancient living monuments, including temples in the three historic town squares (Nepali [Nep.] darbar) of the cities of Kathmandu (Kantipur), Patan (Lalitpur), and Bhaktapur. These sites are considered to be of outstanding universal value and have been on UNESCO's World Heritage List since 1979. They have not only become key elements of the national pride and identity of Nepal but are also the basis for a growing heritage tourism industry. Soon after the destruction, voices were raised in newspapers bemoaning a ‘sense of an ending’ and ‘a new sense of loss’ (Karki 2015) while claiming a future for Nepal's architectural heritage. In the aftermath, for many involved, controversies over rebuilding became a debate about cultural identity and cultural values, presenting new alliances and frictions in the process of re-evaluating cultural heritage (A. Bhattarai 2018).

This chapter focuses on the Architecture Galleries that constitute a section of the Patan Museum, housed inside the ancient Royal Palace at the Patan Durbar Square (Figure 12.1).

In the wake of the earthquake, the exhibition introduced some of the prevailing cross-disciplinary cultural–historical discussions around conservation and post-earthquake reconstruction or rebuilding and applied them to the field of museology. The following analysis thus contributesto the field of heritage studies and also museum studies, an emerging interdisciplinary area that has increased in popularity since the 1980s. So far, there is hardly any study of Nepal's museums (Whitmarsh [2017] is a rare example) or of museums of Newar material culture or cultural heritage. Here, an exploration of the museum space raises questions about the production of cultural heritage in the aftermath. How did the exhibition address the earthquake? What history was being told? Who were the people involved in the reassessment of the site, the actual ‘authors’ of this post-disaster narrative? At the same time, the Architecture Galleries’ exhibits challenged the museum visitor to contemplate contested concepts that had been affected by the earthquake and were now being projected onto certain cultural goods through different agents (local and international): for example, ‘cultural heritage’ (Nep. samskritik sampada), ‘value’ (for example, historic value, memorial value, spirit of place, authenticity), and ‘identity’ (for example, national/international heritage, memory, loss, recovery).