With technical and monetary support from the Austrian Government, the Patan Museum, a former palace of the defunct Malla dynasty in the Kathmandu Valley, was renovated and finished in 1997. It was designed to honor the Malla-period palace as well as to feature a variety of items as a showcase for Nepal's cultural heritage. It is located in one of the most stunning squares in the world. The process of turning the palace into a cutting-edge museum is described in narrative essays by Gotz Hagmuller, who oversaw the transformation. His goal was to design a museum that would exist within the cultural context of its collection as a cohesive visual whole. One of South Asia's most appealing museums is the consequence of this fusion of art and environment, which was stressed by the project's principal curator and cultural advisor Mary Shepherd Slusser.