"The Museum on the Roof of the World" By Clare Harris

Published by Chicago University Press in November 2012, in “The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics, and the Representation of Tibet”, Clare Harris casts her eye over how Tibet has been represented in museums in recent history.
Click here to read an in-depth interview with Clare Harris about the book on Cerise Press.
From the Chicago University Press website:
Clare E. Harris argues in The Museum on the Roof of the World that for the past one hundred and fifty years, British and Chinese collectors and curators have tried to convert Tibet itself into a museum, an image some Tibetans have begun to contest. This book is a powerful account of the museums created by, for, or on behalf of Tibetans and the nationalist agendas that have played out in them.
Harris begins with the British public’s first encounter with Tibetan culture in 1854. She then examines the role of imperial collectors and photographers in representations of the region and visits competing museums of Tibet in India and Lhasa. Drawing on fieldwork in Tibetan communities, she also documents the activities of contemporary Tibetan artists as they try to displace the utopian visions of their country prevalent in the West, as well as the negative assessments of their heritage common in China. Illustrated with many previously unpublished images, this book addresses the pressing question of who has the right to represent Tibet in museums and beyond.