City treasures: Revamped Lahore Heritage Museum opens next week

Officials say more funds needed for substantial repairs of old Tollinton Market.

LAHORE:

The revamped Lahore Heritage Museum will open on October 12, though ambitious ideas for the space have been scaled down from the original plan.

The historic Tollinton Market building on The Mall was converted into the Lahore Heritage Museum in 2006 and used mainly as a single exhibition space. But it has not hosted an exhibition since last year, because of rainwater damage that threatened the items on display.

In its new guise, the museum will be divided into three halls – a permanent gallery, a temporary gallery and a central ‘Hall of Fame’ of Lahoris and officials are currently at work arranging displays, labelling items and fixing lights, said Uzma Usmani, who was put in charge of the museum less than four weeks ago.

“We plan to keep all four doors open unlike before to change the public perception that we have not fixed the building or put it to good use,” she said. “Also, open doors will encourage more visitors.”

The central Hall of Fame with a front and a back door will have pictures of famous Lahoris, such as Rudyard Kipling, the Lahore Museum’s first director; singer and actress Noor Jehan; architect Sir Ganga Ram, artists Ustad Allah Baksh, Sher Muhammad, Laila Rakshat Rai and Gottlieb Leitner, founding principal of Government College (now University); and Alfred Woolner, the first vice chancellor of Punjab University. “We have a list of 90 people and we’ll rotate them,” Usmani said, but the portraits of 24 state heads from the 1974 Islamic Summit, donated by the Punjab Assembly, will be on permanent display in the hall.

Five paintings by Ghulam Mustafa and seven by Mahmoodul Hassan Rumi depicting the gates of the Walled City will go on display. Paintings of the Lahore Fort and Wazir Khan Masjid by Rumi and Javed Bholla, an upcoming artist from Faisalabad, three pieces by Dr Aijaz Anwar and 13 by Mumtaz Hussain will also form part of the opening display, titled Shades of Lahore.

About 40 per cent of the paintings in the permanent gallery are from the miniatures reserve of the Lahore Museum. It will also show works donated by Faqir Aijazuddin and some NCA students of scenes from the Delhi Sultanate, Sikh and British eras. Pieces that were shown in the same building at the famous Punjab Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1864, as well as a rare sketch of that exhibition, will also go on display, as will a register showing the names, wages and working hours of 23 labourers involved in the building’s construction. A bookshop will also be opened in the museum.

The permanent art gallery, located in a rectangular hall adjoining the central Hall of Fame, is partitioned into three sections. The side walls cannot be used for displays because rainwater seeps in through the ventilators and roof.

Museum conservation officer Hafiz Abdul Azeem, who is in charge of the building’s repair work, said about 20 fissures in the ceiling had been filled with cement to prevent rainwater leakage. “We also redid the mud plaster applied to the building’s exterior in 2006. About six to seven crumbling wooden planks in the ceiling have been replaced,” he said

But Azeem said the repair works undertaken were insubstantial. “The treatment we did is temporary. It is like giving first aid to a heart-attack patient. It needs to be fixed properly,” he said.

“If we had adequate funds, creating a comfortable environment for visitors would be the top priority. Proper restoration of the roof, gallery lights and air conditioning are the things I would go for,” said Usmani.

Usmani was put in charge of the museum after her predecessor gave up the job over frustrations at the lack of funding, said a source close to Dr Kanwal Khalid, the previous head.

She planned to transform part of the permanent gallery into a handicrafts bazaar and set up a coffee shop to generate funds and make the museum self-sustainable, while also opening two research units for students.

Usmani said that her predecessor’s idea of maintaining a temporary art exhibition and a hall of fame had been incorporated into a new more economical plan.

Khawaja Pervaiz, the deputy director (administration) at the Lahore Museum, said the major expense for the revamp had been on the purchase of fans and upgrade of the lighting system. The outer walls were painted while minor electrical repairs were done by museum officers.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2011.