LAHORE, Nov 2: The Lahore Museum has come up with a well-researched and valuable work titled “Persian Paintings and Drawings in the Lahore Museum”. The book has been written and compiled by American professor Barbara Schmtiz, Lahore Museum’s Uzma Usmani and Prof Wheerler Thackston of the Harvard University.

Ms Usmani told Dawn that the basic purpose of the publication was to produce research material for scholars and Fine Arts students. She said museums all over the world published various research-based works on their artifacts. The production by the Lahore Museum, she said, was a valuable contribution to Persian art.

Ms Usmani, the restoration and exhibition officer, said the museum had a rich collection of foreign research works and it was now following the international practice of producing research material on various collections.

“I organised the entire collection and documented the photographs. It took three years to accomplish the project,” she said.

She said there were certain misconceptions about the originality of some of the paintings. However, the research by the two foreign professors on the collection had removed doubts about originality.

Lahore Museum Director Humera Alam told this reporter that a Persian painting specialist, Barbara Schmtiz, who was in Lahore as Higher Education Commission foreign faculty professor assigned to the Lahore College for Women University 2007-2009, visited the Lahore Museum to find a collection of Persian and Mughal paintings.

Realising the need for having at least one such collection, she said Barbara Schmtiz volunteered to work with the museum staff to produce a publication. She (Ms Schmtiz) also persuaded an old friend, Wheerler Thakston, professor of the Practice of Persian at Harvard University, to make transcriptions and translation of Persian text of the paintings. The 122-page book costs Rs3,500. Ms Alam said the museum would hold a book launch ceremony.