Museums are fascinating. Sure. As a museum that is also exciting and entertaining, the Heritage Transport Museum (HTM) has been a surprisingly refreshing exception to the general perception of the people that they cannot be so. It is not often, however, that one hears of a museum that it is moving. In the words of Martin Bellamy, head of research and curatorial team at Glasgow Museums, Tarun Thakral’s four-level collection at Taoru in Gurgaon acquired this new adjective and one couldn’t help but wonder at it. “The displays speak to me. There is a personal element in them. The combination of the collection and contemporary art in particular is a stroke of genius. It makes you think twice about what you’re looking at and provides a whole new level of experience,” he said.
After concluding a lecture and presentation in the HTM conference room on Riverside Museum of transport and travel in Scotland, Dr. Bellamy was so impressed with the art installations at HTM that he admitted to being inspired to consider something along similar lines for the museums back home. “This is the most inspiring museum I’ve seen in India and one of the most innovative transport museums I’ve seen in general, in the way that it approaches displays and interprets them with creativity.”
Thakral, founder and managing trustee at Heritage Transport Museum pointed out that the main challenge facing any museum in India is the mindset most Indians share about museums in general: that they are boring. “Our museum has been created and curated to be a fun space,” he said. While the journey hasn’t been easy with limited support and funds from the Government, the space is still being developed and the attempt is clearly to make it as creative and interactive as possible.
“We are also making sure that nothing is stationary, you might come back here three months later and find different displays and different arrangements. That’s the beauty of a museum like ours, we don’t let anything be static,” Thakral added with a smile.
Dr. Bellamy also commended the conciseness of the text labels next to the exhibits with special emphasis: “The labels are nice and short, easy to read and in some cases I don’t even need to read the label to understand what I’m looking at. This, I feel, is extremely important in any museum. Presenting an average onlooker with an intimidating monolith and a tediously long historical note next to it makes the object difficult to relate with. Here, I come in and immediately see as well as understand. The art is a wonderful addition to my experience as a whole and complements the displays rather than fighting them. The choices and the integration are very intelligent and very moving,” he said.
