Indian Museum Would Be More Friendly

To celebrate the 200 years of existence, Indian Museum would get a new
look. It'll break the idea of traditional museum and would come with a
more visitor-friendly outlook.
The authority have some projects to be completed by the year 2013.
One of the project is the entire renovation of the buildings. The
other projects are: re-open the Harappa gallery with a new look to the
visitors, recruitment of guides for the visitors, training programmes
relating to the museum, organisation of seminars, re-run
of Museum On Wheels, more security arrangements etc.
A community named 'Friends Of Indian Museum' already opened on social
networking site
'Facebook'. Programmes on quiz, chat etc will broadcast on FM Channel.
The official website of Indian Museum will be updated.
A 6-months crash
course on 'Cultural Heritage & Museum Studies' will be run shortly.
Graduates in any stream will be eligible to apply for this course.
Course fee only Rs. 1000. No age bar. Classes will be held on
Saturdays & Mondays only. The primary syllabus of this course is
'Relays of History of Indian Culture' and learning of museum would be
the later part of course. On completion of course, certificates will
be given to successful students.
Enthusiastic students of archaeology and history may take the
profession of guide here on contractual basis. Advertisement about
this will be published soon on newspapers.
Replica of archaeological 'masterpieces' would be shown again by a big
bus named 'Museum On Wheels' and a video corner would be there also to
aware the rural youths about the importance of museums.
The closed Harappan gallery would be re-opened shortly with a new name
'Pre-proto-early Historic Gallery'.
And more events would be organised to create awareness amongst youth. --
A. B.

Comments

Anonymous said…
please note that the report is a collection of various articles from the period 2008 onwards.
KOLKATA: Indian Museum, one of the oldest in the world, will celebrate its bicentenary in 2014.

An attempt was initiated in 2008 with the formation of a Bicentenary Vision And Development Committee (BVDC) to steer the restoration work at the museum, but the effort has ended up in a bureaucratic muddle and resulted in resignation of eminent scholars who were once inducted into the committee.

Anup Motilal, the director of the museum then as an additional charge, said work on the external facade will start in December this year. He claimed Chapman & Taylor (C&T), which has been roped in as the consultancy firm to prepare a report on the restoration work, has already submitted a report. But when contacted, C&T India representative Sapna Kumar told TOI they have three months time and will submit the report in December. Sources in National Buildings Construction Corporation Ltd (NBCC), which was awarded the project by the ministry of culture on a turnkey basis, also confirmed it.

This is not the only contradiction in the whole restoration episode. Nor is C&T the first to get the project offer.
In fact, the BVDC has ceased to function since October 2009.

While most of the committee members chose to maintain silence on the issue, historian Tapati Guha-Thakurta, who is also on the board of trustees, said, "A group of people deliberately quashed the project.

Another member of the committee echoed it. "We tried to do something for the museum, but the entire project was politicized, ultimately it came to our knowledge that even C&T has offshored the consultancy regarding the project report to some restorer group in Kolkata itself, words are flowing that the project work was done under the guidance of some Biswadip Sen who lost the goodwill due to some shaddy works in the past, he said on condition of anonymity.

All our proposals - to appoint an officer in special duty, a team of architects and a curatorial consultant - were first accepted and then rejected. But what's happening now? Everybody has been kept in the dark. If there's any alternative plan, it should be shared on the public domain," quipped Guha-Thakurta.

But what was the contribution of the then director KK Basa, who took over as director from Anuradha Mukherjee? Guha-Thakurta had an answer for that. "Kishore Basa was hounded out by the big daddies of the ministry of culture. He was made the scapegoat for all inaction at the museum," she said.

Dated : 29.12.2012

This comment is not meant to humiliate any person living or dead. Its an effort to reveal the reality to the citizens of India. I am thankful to all those people whose articles have helped in making the blog.

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