ABSTRACT
Conjunctures of urban and rural, local and global suffuse DakshinaChitra, an
open-air museum just outside Chennai, the capital of the southern Indian state
of Tamil Nadu.1 Nestled among villages now being transformed by the uneven
penetration of urban infrastructure and services, the site comprises a montage
made up of residues of other, more distant villages and towns. Insistently local,
the site is none the less a fixed space of transnational culture. Its exhibitionary
modes and spatial syntax are modelled on those of new, interactive museums
and cultural centres across the globe and it is cosmopolitan elites, national and
transnational, whose nostalgia it solicits.
