THE LATE-VICTORIAN HISTORIES OF INDIAN ART OBJECTS: POLITICS AND AESTHETICS IN JAIPUR'S ALBERT HALL MUSEUM

Abstract

Recent guidebooks for the Westernertraveling to Northern India generally refer the prospective visitor to a common range of cities around Delhi – Agra, Jaipur, and Udaipur; within these, the Taj Mahal, Jaipur's Pink City and nearby Amber Fort, and Udaipur's glamorous lake palaces usually merit must-see status. Until its refurbishment a few years ago, the Albert Hall Museum, an elaborate structure with old-fashioned interiors and a location a kilometer south of Jaipur's city center, ranked as a second- or even third-tier tourist attraction; travel guides from recent years mention it with indifference, describing its collections as “dusty” and “fine, if carelessly exhibited” (Bindloss and Singh 170), or even suggesting that “a slow circular turn around the building in a car will suffice” (Frommers520). Yet a century ago the Museum proudly occupied a primary place in British travel guides to India. It opened with ceremony and fanfare in 1887, and by 1898 almost three million Indian and over ten thousand European visitors had passed through its doors (Hendley,Report9). A striking example of colonial architecture, constructed of white stone with numerous courtyards, covered walkways, and ornamented domes (Figure 1), it was regarded as perhaps the most noteworthy edifice within a noteworthy Indian city. Thomas Holbein Hendley, resident Surgeon-Major in Jaipur, chief curator for the 1883 Jaipur Exhibition, and the Albert Hall Museum's Secretary and tireless champion, recommended that travelers in Jaipur for a single day make two visits, both morning and evening, to the site, and that those with an additional day to spend in the city schedule a third visit. Murray'sHandbook for Travellers in India, Burma and Ceylonconcurred, describing it as “a beautiful museum – an Oriental South Kensington, suitably housed” (174), and just after the turn of the century, English journalist Sidney Low recalled that it was “the best museum, with one exception, in all India, a museum which, in the careful selection and the judicious arrangement of its contents, is a model of what such an institution ought to be” (114).