kathmandu

The capital of Nepal, is also one of the sites selected for UNESCO world heritage status. The historic city, not clearly bounded, weaves itself into rapidly transforming neighborhoods and commercial quarters, offering a an often entangled patchwork of cultural heritage sites and ephemeral heritage practices and materialities.

Three of our team members have been working on Kathmandu-related forms of heritage placemaking: Binita Magaiya has been collaborating with local stakeholders with respect to the post-2015 earthquake reconstruction of Kasthamandap at Kathmandu’s Darbar Square. Monalisa Maharjan has studied Hindu-Buddhist processions in the historic city of Kathmandu. Diego Jaimes-Niño, project coordinator of HaP, researches vernacular places and practices around Kathmandu Valley and their role in urban built heritage as a social formation, for example in the rich and diverse typology of the Newah courtyard.

Museum-making in Nepal includes the exploration of living heritage spaces and the exhibition space of a museum, as is the case of Itumbahal Monastery. PI Stefanie Lotter explored how, at sites of living heritage, the need for a museum and the need to use material objects in a monastic collection are negotiated. External partner Swosti Rajbhandari Kayastha, a museologist, curator and scholar of Nepali Art History has enriched our network with a podcast about the Itumbaha community museum, for which she was a key consultant, and contributed to our Summer School 2022 and Spring School 2024.