The Tibet Museum, on the southern edge of Lhasa beside the Norbulingka, is the one place in the city where the material culture of the plateau is laid out and explained in sequence. It opened at the end of the 1990s and has since been substantially expanded and rehung, and it holds collections that range from prehistoric finds to the twentieth century, drawn from across the whole of the plateau rather than from Lhasa alone.
What is inside
The strongest holdings are in religious art: thangka paintings, including large appliqué and embroidered examples; gilt bronze images of Buddhas, bodhisattvas and historical teachers; ritual objects in silver, brass and human bone; manuscript and block-printed texts; and monastic textiles. Alongside these are the objects of ordinary life, which are often the more revealing: clothing in wool, fur and brocade, women's headdresses with coral and turquoise, saddles, horse trappings and stirrups, butter churns, barley measures, tea bricks, cooking pots, snow goggles and the tools of nomadic herding. There are also archaeological finds from the early kingdoms of the plateau, and material documenting the trade routes and the regional variety of dress and housing.
How to use it
The museum is the best preparation for anything else you plan to see in Tibet, because the labels explain what you are looking at in the monasteries - the function of a reliquary stupa, the hierarchy of images on a thangka, the meaning of the colours and hand gestures. It is also the easiest place to see objects that are kept behind glass in temples, at close range and with context. Labels are in Tibetan, Chinese and English, which is not true of every site on the plateau.
Practical notes
The museum is a short walk from the Norbulingka and about twenty minutes from the centre of Lhasa by taxi, and it is served by local buses. Entry is free or very cheap and requires identification; it closes on Mondays, and opening hours are shorter in winter. Allow two hours for a serious visit. Photography without flash is generally permitted in the permanent galleries, but check at the entrance, since temporary exhibitions may have different rules. Combined with the Norbulingka next door, it makes a very full half day.
