Former UN chief's home to be museum
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The Yangon home of Myanmar's most esteemed diplomat, former UN secretary general U Thant, is being restored and will open as a museum, his daughter said.
Government officials, diplomats and members of U Thant’s family gathered on Saturday to unveil the restored home, a two-storey yellow villa built in the 1920s and where he lived in the 1950s before serving as the UN chief.
The home of the late diplomat, who as the first UN secretary general from Asia succeeded in helping to defuse the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, is located in Yangon’s Kamayut district.
It is being renovated as part of an effort to preserve the colonial-era cityscape of one of Asia’s last untouched cities.
There will be no admission fee as the museum will be funded by well-wishers, U Thant’s daughter Aye Aye Thant said.
It will display documents, papers and photos from the time U Thant lived in Myanmar, before he was assigned to UN headquarters in New York. The museum is scheduled to open to the public in the coming months, said a statement from the Yangon Heritage Trust, which is chaired by Dr Thant Myint-U, a Harvard-educated historian who is also U Thant’s grandson.
U Thant was secretary general of the UN for 10 years from 1961.
He died in New York in 1974.
