Meritorious Collecting and Curating in Buddhist Southeast Asia
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- G52
- Event type
- Lecture
About this event
When is a temple a museum? How is a museum in the temple? I explore these and other questions through the lens of Buddhist merit-making. This focus on Shan temples in Myanmar and northern Thailand, invites responses to the notion that localised practices of collecting and curating, challenge conventional narratives about Shan Buddhist culture in Southeast Asia.
This lecture expands on doctoral research on the temple museum in Myanmar (2015-2018), through work-in-progress at Shan temples in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. ‘Meritorious Collecting and Curating in Buddhist Southeast Asia’ is also the title of a digital archive that is being developed in collaboration with SOAS Digital Collections.
Acknowledgement: research was conducted with funding from the School of Arts annual research budget, SOAS research culture Fund (2024/25) and ESRC Impact Accelerator Account (2025/26).
Registration
This event free, open to the public, and held in-person only.
Organiser
Organised by the SOAS Centre of South East Asian Studies.
The Art and Archaeology of Pre-Modern Hindu-Buddhist Southeast Asia Lecture Series
Jointly organized by CSEAS and the SOAS-Alphawood Asian Art Programme, this lecture series invites leading experts to share their latest insights and research on Hindu-Buddhist Southeast Asia.
Contact
About the speaker
Heidi Tan is Lecturer in Curating and Museology at SOAS University of London. A founding curator of the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore, she was responsible for developing permanent galleries and a series of special exhibitions dedicated to Southeast Asian art and material culture. She has conducted fieldwork in the region, particularly in Myanmar, since 2008. In 2020, she was awarded her PhD for the thesis: Meritorious Curating and the Renewal of Pagoda Museums in Myanmar.
Header image credit: Poi Sang Long procession, Chiang Mai. Photo: Jaran Janta, 2025.
Image gallery
