Museums are needed to preserve cultural heritage

This is one of the biggest challenges for contemporary societies: as important as the health of a society or the environment.

Portraits of victims of communist rule decorate the ceiling of Bunk’Art2, a nuclear bunker turned museum in Tirana, Albania, on December 5. Museums play a direct role in preserving and enriching the community in which they are sustained.  | Photo Credit: Vadim Ghirda/AP

THE Indian Museum in Kolkata was the first public museum in India and was established in 1814. Thereafter, several museums of varied interests were established across the country. Astonishingly, however, the state of museums in India today has not really progressed too far from the days of their inception some two centuries ago.

There are several reasons for this, but primarily one can attribute it to the fact that the age-old traditional approach to museums has continued unchanged; there has been complete indifference on the part of government towards museums; and finally, even though the collections in these museums have expanded significantly over the years, hardly any attention has been paid to questions of conservation, curatorial and collection research, or exhibitions and educational services. And, apart from a few exceptions, museums have failed to publish any literature or articles on their collections or related subjects. Thus, even 75 years after Independence, the approach to museum administration has remained largely unchanged.

Amazingly, the same country that created iconic institutes such as the IITs and the IIMs after Independence failed to recognise the need for a national-level institute of heritage management. It is evident from the national policies created since 1947 that culture was not equated with other sectors. It continues today to be treated in a cavalier fashion, either given second-class treatment or treated as non-productive. The fact that the culture industry can be a major economic asset, generating revenue and employment, has completely bypassed India’s governments.

The Indian Museum, in Kolkata was the first public museum in India and was established in 1814. Here, a museum official and a restoration expert inspect an oil painting of Raja Rammohan Roy (a file picture). Very little attention has been paid in India to questions of conservation or curatorial and collection research. | Photo Credit: PARTH SANYAL

Meanwhile, the concept of the 21st century museum or Museum of Tomorrow started in Europe and America as well as in some progressive countries of Asia as early as 1990. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) played a vital role in developing the concept of universal museums for the world community. The key objective was to reunite all like-minded countries on a single platform and encourage them to develop a universal approach towards preservation of a common cultural heritage to be shared with the world. By the late 20th century, all large museums in Europe and America had seriously sensed a need for such changes and incorporated them in their policies before the dawn of the 21st century.

India’s museums have, however, comprehensively lagged behind the international movement, both due to a lack of practical experience and the absence of a clear vision. Museums here are unable to meet the basic parameters of a standard museum as defined by ICOM. Neither the primary museums that showcase much of the nation’s heritage nor the State-level or regional museums have changed their basic approach or adopted modern museum practices.

Certainly, the challenges are numerous, such as tradition versus disruption, freedom versus constraint, analogue versus digital thinking, history versus contemporary history, pull over push, new audiences for new kinds of art, government indifference, inadequate human resources, inefficient processes, static art collections, and more. Given this environment, museums have to work harder to sustain themselves and evolve into modern institutes.

One cannot forget that traditional museums were created at different periods of time for audiences different from the ones they now have to serve. While in the past, mapping, collecting, and preserving cultural evidence were of major importance, today museums are required to connect with society and represent the people they serve. Museums are now, more than ever, expected to evolve with the times and re-establish their identity as Museums of Tomorrow and develop the skills to reformulate objectives keeping in mind the demographic, social, economic, and cultural changes taking place in contemporary society and restructure according to the needs of the people.

The Indian Museum  collaborated with the Zoological Survey of India to celebrate Global Tiger Day, in Kolkata on July 29, 2015. Where once mapping, collecting, and preserving were of importance, today’s museums are also required to connect with and represent the larger society.  | Photo Credit: ASHOKE CHAKRABARTY

The beginnings

The concept of public museums originated in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries with the conservative outlook to study and preserve the cultural heritage of mankind, but with the passage of time, it gradually transformed into a mass movement for access to national and world art and culture. The establishment of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the British Museum in London, and the Louvre in France encouraged those with a progressive outlook to study the repository of antiquities of the ancient world as the collective cultural property of mankind.

It was this concept that encouraged European antiquarians and orientalists to look at India’s cultural heritage from the oriental study and research point of view. It was Sir William Jones, an exceptional, cultivated, and informed mind, who, as a necessary first step towards the accomplishment of Oriental studies, gathered around him a band of enthusiastic antiquarians through whose active collaboration he was able to establish the first oriental study and research institute in Calcutta on January 15, 1784, the Asiatic Society, an institute that engaged many disciplines under social sciences and humanities and later gave birth to the Indian Museum.

Thereafter, a number of museums of varied interests were established in different places, but they did not receive the attention and patronage of the then British government. The concept of museums during this period remained more or less at the level of discovery, exploration, and excavation. Some provincial museums did survive somehow, but with low maintenance they could not do anything really productive for society then.

It was probably the guilt of not doing enough in the field of art and culture that prompted the British government, in 1936, to constitute a two-member committee of S.F. Markham and H. Hargreaves to review the conditions of Indian museums and recommend remedial measures. The detailed report was an eye-opener both for the government and those who were the principal organisers of museums in India.

A conservator  at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Mumbai, cleaning accretions from the surface of a gilded bronze sculpture using laser ablation technique.  | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

The report included two significant observations, which probably persuaded the government to introduce museology as a discipline in the university system. First, that scarcely a single museum in India had the knowledge of how manuscripts, exhibits, pictures, or woodworks should be preserved or exhibited. And second, the low standard of curatorship and sheer dearth of knowledge in museum management.

While, because of the outbreak of the Second World War, the British government shelved this review committee report of 1936, it does not seem too wide off the mark from the conditions obtaining today either.

The question in the Indian context then is, how does a museum re-establish a new identity in contemporary society? How do we learn to read and understand our history?

Museums today are no longer seen as mere repositories of antiquities but are considered cultural and social spaces, centres for education, and civic spaces for social interaction. Museums play a direct role in preserving and enriching the community in which they are sustained. As Glenn Lowry, Director of the Museum of Modern Art, New York City, argues: “There is a fundamental difference in how an institution conceives itself if it thinks of its public as spectators or as participants.”

Lowry’s point is about the relationship between the museum and its audience, and how this relationship turns into participatory enrichment. This places museums in an important position of trust in relation to audiences, local communities, donors, partner organisations, sponsors, and funders. Museums all over the world have begun looking at their visitors as active participants and are slowly but gradually acknowledging their ownership and extending museum access to cultural heritage as well as collection information. Such relationships help society create an environment where diverse communities recognise commonalities and differences as an integral part of the cultural legacy and allow people to learn about, reflect upon, and assimilate the world at their own pace.

This can become possible in Indian museums only when we start learning to view things in a global context. If we know what to look for, we can see how people from varied countries with diverse cultures could inevitably communicate beyond their borders. For instance, the exhibition “India and the World” held in 2018 at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), the museum with which I have been associated since 2007, provided a model for museums to share collections with people across the world, some of whom would otherwise never have had access to them. The 228 objects featured spanned diverse times, cultures, and locations and were selectively juxtaposed as if in dialogue, resulting in a visual display that offered enlightening and exceptional glimpses of the shared past that has shaped India and the world.

The CSMVS in Mumbai is one of the four major cultural institutes of the country, the others being the National Museum, New Delhi; the Indian Museum, Kolkata; and the Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad. It gets no government aid and is maintained by the people of Mumbai. The 100-year-old museum is perhaps one of the most successful examples of the public-private partnership model for museums. To go beyond being merely a showcase of antiquities, the CSMVS began its modernisation programme 10 years ago, addressing the issues of display, maintenance, visitor facilities, education, and security.

The Citi-CSMVS Museum on Wheels bus enters a rural school campus where hundreds of children wait for the bus experience. The CSMVS is affiliated to the University of Mumbai and has become an active space for social and academic learning. | Photo Credit: Courtesy: The Trustees of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai

The CSMVS is affiliated to the University of Mumbai and has become an active space for social and academic learning, its education department promoting intercultural dialogues between communities. It is one of the few museums in the country that invests about 35 per cent of its annual budget on education and art conservation. And its Research and Publication department consistently produces quality literature for all ages. It has organised many thought-provoking in-house exhibitions on Indian art and culture and also brought world cultures to its venue in collaboration with iconic institutes in the UK, the US, and Europe.

Today, a quick survey of the quality of exhibitions and activities at the National Galleries of Modern Art, the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai, the recently inaugurated Bihar Museum in Patna, the Victoria Memorial and the Indian Museum in Kolkata, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and the National Museum in New Delhi, and the National Council of Science Museums does indicate that Indian museums are slowly and steadily evolving with the changing world and are ceasing to be purely storehouses for art and antiquities. But the major crises in the domain remain: that of inadequate number of trained professionals and the absence of visionary leadership.

The bronze gallery  of the Egmore Government Museum in Chennai has a marvellous collection of south Indian bronze sculptures starting from the Pallava and Chola eras, seventh to 11th centuries, to modern times. The Ardhanariswara bronze seen here, one of the earliest statues depicting Shiva in bronze, is remarkable for its detailing.  | Photo Credit: R. Ravindran

During the pandemic, museums realised that the preservation of cultural heritage was arguably one of the biggest challenges for contemporary societies. In fact, it is similar to other great challenges such as fostering a society’s good health or ensuring environmental sustainability. It is indeed true that the preservation of the tangible and intangible heritage of mankind and the dissemination of knowledge will depend not only on the community of professionals but also on an informed and interested public.

A young visitor to “India and the World” wrote in the visitors’ book: “Exquisite curation, equally impressive research process, the efforts to state this timely message about not simply understanding the past in order to reconsider our present and future, but acknowledging how chronology, time, and space are wonderfully complicated. The more we see and look and give into our curiosities that are unknown, what is uncomfortable—this is the idea.” The comment gives us enough indication of the high expectations this generation has from cultural institutions, museums, and galleries.

Museums will need to get creative and innovative to remain relevant. They will have to strive to provoke the creative capacities of young visitors, through constructive activities and experiences, so that they remain engaged.

Neil MacGregor, a former Director of the British Museum, described this phenomenon: “The things we make have one supreme quality—they live longer than us. We perish, they survive; we have one life, they have many lives; and in each life they can mean different things, which means that while we all have one biography, they have many.”

That could be a good and creative way to think about future museums.

Sabyasachi Mukherjee is Director General of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai; Director of the PG (Diploma) Programme in Museology and Art Conservation at CSMVS; a frequent lecturer; and a member of many committees, particularly the Bizot Group of international museum directors and the UK–Arts and Humanities Research Council. 

The crux

• Museums in India have not changed much from when they were first established some two centuries ago. 
• This can attributed to the following factors: there is still a traditional approach to museums; there has been complete indifference on the part of government towards museums; and little attention has been paid to questions of conservation, curatorial and collection research, or exhibitions and educational services.
• By the late 20th century, all large museums in Europe and America had incorporated changes in their policies.
• However, neither India’s primary museums that showcase much of the nation’s heritage nor its State-level or regional museums have changed their basic approach or adopted modern museum practices. This is both due to a lack of practical experience and the absence of a clear vision.
• Museums will need to get creative and innovative to remain relevant.
• While in the past, mapping, collecting, and preserving cultural evidence were of major importance, today museums are required to connect with society and represent the people they serve. They are no longer seen as mere repositories of antiquities but are considered cultural and social spaces, centres for education, and civic spaces for social interaction.
• The CSMVS is one of the few museums in the country that invests about 35 per cent of its annual budget on education and art conservation and has become an active space for social and academic learning.