Lahore Museum

The Lahore Museum is a museum located in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Founded in 1865 at a smaller location and opened in 1894 at its current location on The Mall in Lahore during the British colonial period, Lahore Museum is Pakistan's largest museum, as well as one of its most visited ones.
The museum houses an extensive collection of Buddhist art from the ancient Indo-Greek and Gandhara kingdoms. It also has collections from the Indus Valley Civilisation, Mughal Empire, Sikh Empire and the British Raj.
The Lahore Museum, along with the Zamzama Gun located directly in front of the building, is the setting of the opening scene in the novel Kim by Rudyard Kipling, whose father, John Lockwood Kipling, was one of the museum's earliest curators.

History

Lahore Museum was originally established in 1865–66 on the site of the current Tollinton Market – a hall built for the 1864 Punjab Exhibition. The present building was designed by Bhai Ram Singh and John Lockwood Kipling, while its construction was overseen by Ganga Ram.
It was constructed as a memorial of Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria held in 1887, and financed through a special public fund raised on the occasion. The foundation stone of the new museum was laid on 3 February 1890 by Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, Queen Victoria's grandson. On its completion in 1894, the entire museum collection was transferred to present building with its new name as Jubilee Museum.
Rudyard Kipling's father, John Lockwood Kipling, was one of the museum's first curators, and was succeeded by K. N. Sitaram. The museum's collection was shifted in 1894 to its present location on The Mall, in Lahore's British-era core.
In 1948, as part of the partition of Punjab, the artefacts of the museum were divided between the newly formed countries of Pakistan and India, with the museum retaining about 60% of its collection. The rest was given to India and eventually housed at the Government Museum and Art Gallery in Chandigarh, built specifically for this purpose.
The museum's golden years are considered to be from 1970 to 1990, when scholar, archaeologist, and museologist Dr Saif-ur-Rehman Dar served as its director. He wrote several books about the museum, and his tenure was complemented by that of B.A. Qureshi, who was the chairman of the museum's board of governors back then.
Over 250,000 visitors were registered at the Lahore Museum in 2005. This dropped to 236,536 in 2016, 214,697 in 2017, but rose to 227,994 in 2018. It was the most popular museum of Pakistan among foreigners in 2016 and 2017. It dropped to second place in 2018, having been replaced by Taxila Museum.

Scope

The museum displays archaeological materials from Bronze Age to the medieval-era Hindu Shahi and Mughal period. It has one of the largest collections of archaeology, history, arts, fine arts, applied arts, ethnology, and craft objects in Pakistan. It also has an extensive collection of Hellenistic and Mughal coins. There is also a photo gallery dedicated to the emergence of Pakistan as an independent state, the Pakistan Movement Gallery.

Collections

The museum has a number of Greco-Buddhist sculptures, Mughal and Pahari paintings on display. Over 58,000 artifacts are reported to be part of its collection, with only 14,000 being on display. The collection contains important relics from the Indus Valley civilization, Gandhara, and Graeco-Bactrian periods as well. The Fasting Buddha, dating from the Gandhara period, is one of the museums most prized and celebrated objects.

''The Evolution of Mankind''

The ceiling of the entrance hall features The ''Evolution of Mankind'', a large mural consisting of 48 panels. It was painted by Pakistani artist Sadequain who originally completed it in 1973. Due to the weather conditions and termite attacks, the mural suffered significant damage over the years. A grant was approved by the Governor of Punjab in 2008 to start the restoration work. It was taken down in 2010, while restoration work began in 2012. By 2018, 16 of the panels had been restored by Uzma Usmani and Mumtaz Hussain.
The museum also contains fine specimens of Mughal and Sikh carved woodwork and has a large collection of paintings dating back to the British period. The collection also includes musical instruments, ancient jewelry, textiles, pottery, and armory, as well as some Tibetan and Nepalese work on display.

Directors

The following is a list of the museum's directors and curators.

No.	Name	Role	Tenure
1	Captain I.P Westmorland	Curator	1873 – 1874
2	A.R Becher Esquire	Curator	1874 – 1875
3	John Lockwood Kipling	Curator	1875 – 1877, 1879 – 1890
4	D. Gabbick	Curator	1877 – 1879
5	Fred. Henry Andrews	Curator	1890 – 1893, 1893 – 1897
6	Bhai Ram Singh	Curator	1897 – 1898, 1906 – 1909, 1908 – 1909
7	Percy Brown	Curator	1898 – 1906, 1907 – 1908
8	G.A Wathen	Curator	1909 – 1912
9	Hugh Lionel Heath	Curator	1912 – 1929, 1925 – 1926, 1927 – 1928
10	K.N Sita Ram	Curator	1928 – 1940
11	Rai Bahadur S.N. Gupta	Curator	1920 – 1925, 1926 – 1927, 1940 – 1942
12	K.B Molvi Zafar Hasan	Curator	1942 – 1943
13	Malik Shams	Curator	1947 – 1965
14	Syed Muhammad Taqi	Curator / Director	07-06-1965 to 22–05–1974
15	Dr. Saifur Rehman Dar	Director	07-08-1974 to 15–08–1993, 01-08-1995 to 16–04–1998
16	Dr. F.M. Anjum Rehmani	Officiating Director	16-08-1993 to 31–07–1995, 17-04-1998 to 23–07–2001
17	Mansoor Sohail	Director	23-07-2000 to 29–11–2001
18	Dr. Liaquat Ali Khan Niazi	Director	30-11-2001 to 16–04–2004
19	Syed Gulzar Mashhadi	Director	23-04-2004 to 30–06–2005
20	Naheed Rizvi	Director	01-07-2005 to 29–08–2008
21	Dr. Asghar Nadeem Syed	Director	17-09-2008 to 13–05–2009
22	Dr. Kamran Afzal Cheema	Director	09-07-2009 to 12–08–2009
23	Muhammad Siddique Sheikh	Director	12-08-2009 to 20–04–2010
24	Salman Ijaz	Director	21-04-2010 to 18–05–2010
25	Humera Alam	Director	19-05-2010 to 16–11–2012
26	Sumaira Samad	Director	21-11-2012 to 08–06–2016
27	Syed Tahir Raza Hamdani	Director	14-06-2016 to 23–07–2016
28	Humayun Mazhar Sheikh	Director	25-07-2016 to 02–07–2018
29	Saman Rai	Director	07-11-2018 to 19–03–2019
30	Nasir Jamal Hotiana	Director	20-03-2019 to 31–08–2019
31	Tariq Mahmood Javaid	Director	02-09-2019 to 23–09–2020
32	Ijaz Ahmed Minhas	Director	23-11-2020 to 07–10–2022
33	Muhammad Usman	Director	17-11-2022 to 24–11–2023
34	Sadaf Zafar	Director	08-01-2024 to 15–01–2024
35	Sadia Tehreem	Director	16-01-2024 to 01–05–2024
36	Nabila Irfan	Director	01-05-2024 to 14–10–2025
37	Capt. Tahir Zafar Abbasi	Director	24-10-2025 to 25–11–2025
38	Taseer Ahmad	Director	26-11-2025 to date

Book

The book Masterpieces of Lahore Museum, written by Anjum Rehmani, was published by the museum in 1999 with financial assistance from UNESCO. A new edition was published in 2006.

In popular culture

The opening of Rudyard Kipling's novel, Kim, is set in the vicinity of the old/original Lahore Museum and the Mall areas.