In 1959, the Government of India donated 55 artefacts and 100 photographs to the University of Malaya Art Museum, the predecessor institution of NUS Museum. How do we read this donation beyond its obvious nature as a diplomatic gift?

While archival sources hint at the donation’s links with a series of formal India-Malaya partnerships and as an expression of a transnational solidarity, the broad, inclusive range and artistic achievements of the donated objects defy geo-political logic. They do not represent any single place, race nor culture; contrarily they embody stories of informal border-crossings and cultural intermixing.

Published in conjunction with the NUS Museum Anniversary Lecture Series (2021), Dr Priya Maholay-Jaradi’s lecture explores the motivations behind the donation within the broader cultural and diplomatic histories of India and Malaya. The lecture also addressed how the donation transcends our narrow understanding of civilisations and nation-states as defined by geo-political borders and formal diplomacies; it will uncover the donation as a gift of shared aspirations and friendly, cross-border networks between individual actors who contributed to the formation of a connected art historical imagination and decolonised museological practice.

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