Contemporary Indian museums as “feminist” spaces of care

Discussions about renegotiating the museum space have tended – thus far – to come from the Global North. By applying a feminist framework to examine the exhibits of three different Indian museums, I extend the purview of such discussions to the Global South. Until recently, women and their stories – along with those of other marginalized groups – have largely remained underrepresented in the Indian museum space. In the latter part of the twentieth century, however, Indian curatorial activism helped to subvert hegemonic museological narratives – embodied in a non-personalized curatorial approach. An underlying characteristic that connects the contemporary museums, on the other hand, is a sustained curatorial focus on "silenced" stories, articulated via narratives or materialized through object displays. By evoking the feminist framework, I emphasize curatorial care – whether for past stories, people, sociopolitical issues, the future, or museological displays - as the overarching feature of a remedied Indian museum space.