The PLACE - Hampi Museum at Vijayanagar, conceived and curated by Jeffrey Shaw and Sarah Kenderdine, forms part of an extensive new arts and cultural precinct called Kaladham. This museum brings together PLACE - Hampi (2004), research documents by the art historian Dr. George Michell and his archaeological collaborator Dr. John Fritz and extensive photographic records of Hampi made by the architectural photographer John Gollings.

The PLACE - Hampi Museum draws upon the products of the cultural imaginary and the visual languages of archaeology, photography and new media, so that these elements can converge to reveal the ancient Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagara from a myriad of perspectives. Visitors to the museum engage in sensorial and experiential encounters with Hampi as both a historic place and a living cultural landscape. The museum contains five galleries, whose installations, besides PLACE - Hampi, include:

• A circular light table displaying a high-resolution satellite photograph of Hampi, locating important features of the site. 

• A seminal series of black-and-white night shots taken by Gollings in the 1980s, as well as fifty other photographic prints by him of the Hampi environs.

• A long light table showing panoramic photographs of Hampi (derived from the PLACE - Hampi installation) that gives visitors the opportunity to examine these images in great detail using magnifying glasses. 

• An interactive light table where visitors can select documents from a quantity of transparencies available to them, and scan their barcodes to see annotated high-resolution images projected on the wall. The documents comprise thirty years of archeological work at the site by Fritz and Michell, including site plans, drawings and fieldwork notebooks. This interactive installation is a way for visitors to ‘rummage’ through their archive first-hand.

• A 360-degree panoramic video recording capturing an interview made by Kenderdine with the archaeologists Fritz and Michell, discussing their research at Hampi.

Kaladham I PLACE - Hampi is located at Vijayanagar, 25kms from Hampi. Inaugurated in 2012, the Museum is an initiative of Mrs Sangita Jindal and the JSW Foundation. It is a unique contribution to the to the visual and acoustic record of the Hampi precinct.