The state of our museums

January 31, 2012 12:10 am | Updated October 18, 2016 12:53 pm IST

Despite budget cuts and financial difficulties, museums across the world have done well to attract more visitors in the year that has just ended, but what lies ahead? The International Council of Museums, an organisation of museums and museum professionals from 137 countries, has cautioned that the current year would be critical, with no sign of improvement in the global economic situation. More than ever, museums have to urgently innovate ways of remaining relevant to society. This advice and urging, for an entirely different set of reasons, applies unequivocally to India's museums, particularly the government-administered ones. Of the nearly 1,000 museums in the country, over 90 per cent are state-run. The visitor experience they offer is far from enriching and museum practices they adopt are way below global standards. What is of serious concern is the pathetic state of the National Museum, the premier institution in the country. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture, which looked at its functioning last year, found about a quarter of the galleries closed for more than three years, signage and labels of artefacts poorly designed, hardly 7.5 per cent of its two lakh collections exhibited, and the art acquisition committee defunct for the past 16 years.

Complacency has cost Indian museums the funds they badly need. For example, even the measly Rs. 72.36 crore the Central government allotted in 2009-10, was not fully utilised. This led the parliamentary committee to conclude that “allocation to the museums is enough.” So where, then, does the solution lie? The first step towards a turnaround is to improve the ‘quality, range and relevance' of the exhibits. Simultaneously, programmes to involve and engage people have to be put in place. The recommendations by the B.N. Goswamy Committee (2010) on improving museum infrastructure and administration ought to be implemented without delay. Museums across the world are looking at imaginative ways such as virtual displays to make their collections ‘more publicly available' and ‘show a wider volume of material'. Indian museums will do well to adopt these innovations. The Ministry of Culture has tied up with the British Museum for a modest training programme. This is commendable, but given the urgency, capacity-building should be radically stepped up and India's flagship museums placed in the hands of trained professionals selected from among the best in the world rather than babus and bureaucrats.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.