Rediscovering repositories of heritage
Often considered dull and uninviting, Indian museums are storehouses of history and culture, and deserve repeat visits says Shailaja Tripathi
We don’t go to museums. We prefer malls,
cinema halls and restaurants. Visiting a museum is best left to schools, which
make it mandatory. After all, it is an academic exercise. And what
entertainment can these places possibly offer? I agree that India doesn’t boast
of the greatest museums, but you can’t doubt the collection of artefacts in these
repositories of heritage even for a second. Our eventful history has bequeathed
us numerous masterpieces, but unfortunately, we don’t find them compelling
enough. Cultural historian and museologist Jyotindra Jain says that the habit
of going to museums has just not been inculcated in us.
Strangely though, during overseas trips,
Indians enthusiastically visit The Louvre (Paris), Victoria and Albert Museum
(London), Tate (London), Museum of Modern Art (New York). While a few of them
offer free admission to visit their permanent collections, visitors are charged
for special exhibitions. At The Louvre and MoMA, tickets are priced at 15 Euros
and $25, respectively. Back home, one of the best museums of the country,
National Museum in Delhi, charges a mere Rs. 20.
According to Joyoti Roy, outreach consultant,
National Museum, it receives between 6,00,000 to 7,00,000 visitors each year
and anything between 2,500 and 3,000 per day. The mix includes Indians,
foreigners and school students. For an Indian museum, it is an astounding
figure, but still nowhere close to the footfall that museums we consider the
finest get.
In its annual report for 2014-15, Tate
declared it the “best year ever for visits” with 7.9 million in all and a
record 5.7 million visits to Tate Modern. Tate had the highest number of young
visitors for any art museum in the world, with over 3.5 million under the age
of 35.
Recently, National Gallery of Modern Art,
Bangalore, hosted A. Ramachandran’s expansive retrospective. As we sat outside
the first-floor gallery after Ramachandran walked me through his sketches,
sculptures and paintings, the senior artist, a tad disappointed, said, “Had an
exhibition of this scale taken place abroad, people would have come in
thousands.” There were about three to five visitors inside the gallery at that
time.
Jain, who has also helmed institutions like
the Crafts Museum and Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in Delhi, puts
the onus on the museums. “We developed the museums but didn’t evolve the
infrastructure around it. And it is the museum’s responsibility to do it. When
you know people are not going to come to you, you have to go to them. The
Crafts Museum shares its wall with the India Trade Promotion Organisation. It
receives lakhs of people during the trade fair. I fought tooth and nail to get
that door opened during my tenure (1984-89) so that the visitors spill over to
the Crafts Museum as well. Museums need to rethink their strategies and
outreach should be a major point of concern for them,” said the museologist.
In 2010, UNESCO brought out a report on the
terrible conditions at India’s top eight museums, citing sub-standard
maintenance, lighting and signage, among other issues. In response to that, the
Ministry of Culture put together a 14-point museum reforms agenda and things
have moved forward since then. Events took a turn for the better for the
National Museum with the appointment of IAS officer Venu Vasudevan as its
director general in 2013.
According to the information provided to us
by Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, the oldest museum in Mumbai has received 3,00,000
visitors over the past year. On an average, the museum witnesses 500 visitors
every day, with an average of 2,000 visitors over weekends. Not big numbers
again, but impressive enough in the Indian context. And this is when the museum
re-emerged after a revamp in 2008 with an extensive exhibition programme.
Collaborations, screenings of movies of different genres, and workshops for
adults and children contributed to the increase in the footfall. The
public-private partnership model of the museum is unique and can be replicated
in other cases as well.
Entry of private players like Kiran Nadar
Museum of Art in 2011 has upped the game. In the last six years, KNMA has been
visited by around 1,20,000 visitors from all over the world. It has a stellar
collection of contemporary art from India and the subcontinent, impressive
exhibitions, more than 400 workshops like the paper sculpture workshop with
students of Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya, and Pushp Vihar, a family art workshop.
What’s still missing though? The robust
publicity of exhibitions and creating links between different art spaces that
can also fetch an audience. Another idea is to have different art institutions
located in close proximity host a series of events simultaneously. Museums also
need to transform their cafes, upgrade their museum shops and most importantly,
invest in their human resource. So, what do we do until then? Let’s go and
explore these storehouses of history, culture and knowledge, because unless and
until we claim them, they will remain indifferent to our needs.
Source
| The Hindu | 5 November 2016
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
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