A painted Bangladeshi rickshaw, a World War One uniform and flyers from 1970s gay nightclubs are among the exhibits chosen to offer a fresh view of South Asian culture in a new gallery.
Manchester Museum has created the gallery as part of its £15m renovation.
It says it is the “first permanent gallery in the UK to celebrate the lived experiences and contributions of the South Asian diaspora”.
The South Asia Gallery has been curated by a group of 24 members of the public.
“We want to show the richness and diversity of South Asia,” its co-ordinator Nusrat Ahmed says.
“It was to break down stereotypes and myths, and it was to highlight South Asia as being at the forefront of many things
Some of the collective of co-curators have lent their own items or possessions that tell family stories.
They include Fal Sarker, grandson of quantum science pioneer Satyendra Nath Bose, whose items include letters between Bose and Einstein.
Talat Farooq Awan, a BBC Radio Manchester journalist, found his great-grandfather’s Army uniform on a visit to Pakistan, and persuaded his family to let him bring it back to the museum.
It is being shown alongside posters recruiting people for the British Army in languages including Urdu and Hindi.
“We really want to highlight that South Asians didn’t just come in the 1960s and ’70s,” Ahmed says. “They were very much part of British life before then.
The gallery has been added as part of the overhaul of Manchester Museum, which will reopen on Saturday.
The permanent gallery has been co-curated by the British Museum, Manchester Museum and the South Asia Gallery Collective, a group of 30 individuals including community leaders, educators, artists, historians, journalists and musicians.
The gallery showcases artefacts from the collections of the British Museum and Manchester Museum, alongside new contemporary commissions and personal objects provided by the Collective.