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case study on national museum delhi

Norman Foster and his High-tech Architecture

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Delhi National Museum

National Museum Delhi was the first largest and planned museum in India. Which had been designed by Gurgaryear Committee. It’s connected to all or any or any the Mother city by four Major roads from all directions. it’s four stories with the basement. Also, the basic form of the Building Is Fan formed with the circular court in between enclosed by a coated gallery. In addition, wings are connected with the court consistent with totally different necessities.

National Museum Delhi – Largest Museum of India

Together with art objects of historical, cultural and inventive significance with the aim to show, protect, preserve, and interpret and to function cultural centre for enjoyment and interaction of the folks in inventive and cultural activity.

Zoning of National Museum Delhi

The zoning is doing vertically as well as horizontally. Administration and different workers connected areas and services like H.V.A.C, electrical and different services are at the basement.  exhibitions are placed at a higher level. Horizontally, it is a zone into open, transition, and exhibition areas.

National Museum Delhi – Largest Museum of India

Circulation

It has loose circulation. Visitors enter in hall kinda gallery left aspect of the token counter, all hall is connected with one another with a center circulation court 6m wide, exhibition area of various floors are connected with stairs and lifts and toilet is provided on the stairs.

About floor plans of National Museum Delhi

Moreover, exhibition halls are interconnecting with a central circulation court 6m wide separate entrance for VIP. And physically handicapped are also present.

Underground fire-tank is providing, Conservation lab is providing on the 2 nd floor, common storage, A.C plan room, electrical, provided in the basement.

Firstly, Harapan civilization, Maurya, Gupta, Terracotta, Bronze, Medieval art, Buddhist art, Jewellery, ornamental art, miniature painting, these galleries are placing at ground floor

Secondly, coins, Indian painting, manuscript, Ajanta painting, Thanjavur painting, these galleries are placing on the first floor.

Moreover, textile, western art, wood carving, tribal art, music instrument, these galleries are placing on the second floor.

National Museum Delhi – Largest Museum of India

Lighting at National Museum Delhi

Each display has its own focused light, diffused light. Which are utilizing in false ceilings or hanging by steel sections. No natural light is using inside it. Artificial light is doing with daylight exhibits to keep a minimum. Natural lighting is barely utilizing in the center circulation court. Well played with focused lights with the utilization of concave and convex lenses totally different places. In the jewelry section, the gallery was dark and receding pockets were creating with minimum lighting. The full structure is based around the central rotunda that lights up the whole passageway.

Gallery Circulation

All the Galleries are in a Closed area so Binding Oneself to reach on every display. The main passageway is approx. six mt wide right along the O.T.S. Galleries are largely Rectangular in form. stairs are Provided for Vertical Circulation. Height Varies From 2.4 to 3.5 mt.

Display techniques at National Museum Delhi

Haphazard travel movement, the form of the area is itself useful in the display. Columns returning in between are additionally using for display, linear arrangements on the corridors, some paintings are boxing within the walls. Whereas most of them are hanged on walls, display to display distance is 3.5 m to 4 m, every display has its own focussed light, diffuse light. Lights are utilizing in false ceilings or hanging by steel section, no natural lights are using. Interiors were doing with the assistance of wood, glass and stone. The flooring used is marble and wood. totally different wall colors and rendering are finishing to avoid monotony.

case study on national museum delhi

About structure

The building is a trabeate structure using high-strength R.C.C & red sandstone. And flat beam with drop beam utilized in building. Floor to floor height is approx 4m. Also, all external facades have finished with yellow paint, red sandstone, and sandstone. All internal walls are plastere& color consistent with the theme. False ceiling exhausted exhibition areas All floor end are terrazzo, wooden, tiles & rubber flooring. Interiors are making with wood, glass, stone, aluminum is additionally utilizing in several sections like bronze and coin gallery. Also, temporary structures are provided around the building.

Observations at National Museum Delhi

Separate entrance for VIP. Stone sculptures are places around the building. So there is three front entry in building however just one in use due to security purpose. A loose movement system is provided within the building. Its shop and institute is a further advantage. Also, seating arrangements are creating for the guests to look at the thing of interest on display. The toilet isn’t properly placing in the building. No additional firefighting stairs in the building. No natural light is utilizing in the exhibition. It has its galleries rotating around an open courtyard, no views are providing. Sculpture in the central gallery isn’t visible properly due to glare from the back.

case study on national museum delhi

Also, read The Etihad Museum, Dubai-UAE

case study on national museum delhi

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Museums of the World: National Museum, New Delhi

case study on national museum delhi

The tangible substitute for artistic treasure , Rejuvenating the lost historical tales.  Museums set up an environment for humans to experience numerous phases of culture, traditions, historical and archeological, art and technology, and other kinds through art exhibits. The evolution of exhibition spaces creates a sense of connection between people and aspects of the country’s civilization, culture, history, and architecture . The National Museum Delhi is one of the evident artistic spaces that took people throughout the timeline of various art forms of India and foreign countries. The museum building is a reflection of India’s glorious past and a treasure to the present to experience alternate learnings. 

The emergence of the past within the present | National Museum New Delhi  

In 1947-1948, in the era of independence Royal Academy of London exhibited Indian artifacts and art forms and envisaged the idea of setting up a Museum building for the people to evident the Indian culture through artworks. Finally, in 1949, The National Museum of Delhi was open to the public under the Government of India, situated at the corner of the Janpath and Maulana roads. The museum exhibits more than 200,000 artifacts and represents the visual identity of historical and cultural tales of over 5000 years. 

Museums of the World: National Museum, New Delhi - Sheet1

The vision reflecting the past to outshine the future – 

In 1949, before turning all the artifacts and sculptures into their museums, the initial exhibition to uplift the concept of the National Museum was set up in Rashtrapati Bhavan. After its immense success, the authorities announced the premises of the present-era President’s residence as a view gallery for the National Museum for almost six years. The museum entertains people of every age with the essence of connection to learn, explore and observe the historical aspects of India . The vision of protection, preservation, and perception through numerous galleries, visual portrayals, and learning program is the conception of ancient, cultural, and artistic influence.

The design and execution | National Museum New Delhi  

To serve the free-flowing exhibit spaces significant for the general public, the execution of the building took place in 1955 and was finally open to the people to explore in 1960. The well-planned infrastructure enriching the values of more than a million artworks is because of Indian Architect Ganesh Bhikaji Deolalikar .  

As museums directly imply barrier-free spaces that composes of galleries with different approaches in such a way that each area is approachable and vision centric to the visitors. The national museum is a curvilinear building centered around the courtyard raised to three levels. Each level represents different aspects of cultural and historical values. 

Museums of the World: National Museum, New Delhi - Sheet2

The architecture of the museum building is well defined in terms of its contemplating features. It is a concrete structure of sleek and simple horizontal and vertical lines. The central courtyard connecting the radial blocks is an appropriate way to define the environmental impact and to provide aesthetic appeal to the building. 

The circular corridor along the courtyard directs the visitors in the right direction.

National Museum captured the history, Enhancing the presence within learning discovery.

The galleries of the museums are the storehouse of experimental learning that entertains each group of visitors with different kinds of activities, exhibits of artworks, and video graphics of cultural and historical glimpses. 

case study on national museum delhi

The entrance and the first-level galleries  

The main entrance consists of an articulated temple chariot from the times of the sun temple that resembles the deity of Lord Vishnu . The corridor hall involves services such as ticket counters and administrative facilities to regulate visitor arrivals. 

Museums of the World: National Museum, New Delhi - Sheet3

The museum has arranged the artworks in terms of their origin period – like a time pyramid ranging from pre-historical to modern arts . The first level galleries on the ground floor are for pre-historical artwork, Medieval art, decorative exhibits, Buddhist artwork, and sculptures from Gupta, Maurya Shunga, and Satvahna periods. Visitors can see transcripts, coins, and paintings in the expanded exhibit spaces. Despite its minimal design, the museum provides visitors to envision rare sight of artworks in materials such as terracotta, stone, bronze, textiles, and many more. 

case study on national museum delhi

The gallery possesses weapons, pottery, artifacts, and archeological items from the Indus valley civilization, Harappan and Mohenjodro, from 2500 BCE and 1500 BCE. The galleries are spacious and visitor friendly, and the interiors are composed in a simplified manner to outshine the hidden values of the artworks displayed.

The galleries on the ground floor are all about historical and archeological glory or envisioning preservation stories. The world-famous sculptures and monumental images from the sun temple greet the visitors from the entrance to the way to galleries.

Both sides of the corridors have carved sculptures and monument displays. The lintel from Abaneri and the Mohini from Gaday are known for their carving skills. The inner rotunda on the ground floor shows two large-sized horizontal lintels from Hampi ( Karnataka ) and Warangal (Telangana) representing Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh and one more than life-size image of Bodhisattva from Mathura (Uttar Pradesh). 

Museums of the World: National Museum, New Delhi - Sheet5

To represent the three phases of Buddhist culture – Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana, the first thematic gallery for visitors to understand the cultural values opened in 1990. Every sculpture, artifact, and painting presents a particular story of Buddhist culture. The silk paintings and stucco heads in the gallery remind us of the spread of Buddhism in Central Asia. The bronze images of Maitreya, Avalokitesvara, stucco heads from South Asia, and a life-size Buddha head from Java are impressive. Paintings in the Buddhist style depict Tibet and Nepal. A modern Buddha image in wood with gold wash from Burma and various ritual items like the wheel and ambrosia displays attract the visitors.   

Museums of the World: National Museum, New Delhi - Sheet6

The coin collection is remarkable for the variety, rarity, and antiquity of  Indian coins from the 6th Cen. BCE. to the end of the 19th century CE. The collection comprises 1,18,000 coins of gold, silver, copper, and alloys–billion, point, and lead. These coins are Treasure troves, hoards, gifts, and through purchases. 

Second-level galleries and educational facilities | National Museum New Delhi

There are terracotta, stone , and wooden carved sculptures on the ground floor of the building. The first floor provides a learning and experimental program for visitors. 

Museums of the World: National Museum, New Delhi - Sheet7

The galleries are in a way that gives more space for circulation. The exhibits are either in the center of the structure or along the structural walls. The first floor comprises institutions and galleries for paintings, manuscripts, arms, and armor. 

Museums of the World: National Museum, New Delhi - Sheet8

The third level of the museum 

The second floor mainly shows glimpses of India’s rich wood carving tradition from the 17th to 19th century. The museum also has a collection of musical instruments, maritime relics, snippets of tribal lifestyle, textiles , and western arts. 

Sheet10

Conclusion | National Museum New Delhi  

The National Museum is the life experience of numerous emotional, ethical, and literal moments of the history and culture of India. The Museum is discharging three primary functions – the cultivation of awareness, dissemination of information, and bringing a desirable change in society through its manifold and invaluable collection and preservation of artifacts. It is also imparting training in museum methods, restoration, and conservancy of the immense artistic equity of not particularly India but further of several diverse countries to several Museums/ Institutions .

External References – 

National Museum Delhi (no date) Museums – The World Museums Network . Available at: http://museu.ms/museum/details/15954/national-museum-delhi (Accessed: February 28, 2023). 

Photo Gallery (no date) National Museum, New Delhi . Available at: http://www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in/en/photo-gallery (Accessed: February 28, 2023). 

National Museum, New Delhi (2023) Wikipedia . Wikimedia Foundation. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum,_New_Delhi (Accessed: February 28, 2023). 

Museums of the World: National Museum, New Delhi - Sheet1

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case study on national museum delhi

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National Museum

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The Fortune-Teller, oil on canvas by Georges de La Tour, probably the 1630s; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. (101.9 x 123.5 cm.) (The Fortune Teller)

National Museum

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  • Officila Site of the National Museum, New Delhi, India

National Museum

National Museum , museum in New Delhi devoted to Indian art and archaeology as well as to Buddhist studies. The collections also include examples of anthropology; arms and armour; decorative arts, including jewelry; epigraphy; and pre-Columbian and Western art.

The art of painting is well represented with Indian miniatures of the Mughal , Rajput , Deccani , and Pahari schools. The museum has fine old manuscripts, as well as temple hangings, lavishly brocaded saris , weapons set with precious stones, and painted pottery . Antiquities from Central Asia recovered by Aurel Stein include the only examples of mural paintings from Buddhist shrines outside their native countries.

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Museums as Intangible Heritage: National Museum of Natural History (Nmnh), New Delhi : a Case Study

Profile image of Nazia Kamal

The role of museum is to acquire, preserve and promote their collections as a contribution to safeguarding the natural and cultural heritage. Preservation, study and transmission of this heritage are of great importance for all societies, for inter-cultural dialogue and sustainable development. Interaction with the constituent community and promotion of heritage is an integral part of the educational role of the museum. Museums have great potential to raise public awareness on the benefit of heritage, its value and importance for societies. In recent years museum is experiencing one of the most noteworthy transformations with global recognition of the urgent need to preserve the intangible heritage. The international community (UNESCO) has also become conscious that Intangible Heritage needs and deserves international safeguarding. This paper focuses the case study of National Museum of Natural History, New Delhi (India) with safeguarding Intangible Natural Heritage. This is the fir...

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The term cultural heritage has changed considerably in recent decades, partially owing to the instruments developed by UNESCO. Cultural heritage does not end at monuments and collection of objects. It also includes traditions or living expressions inherited from ancestors and passed on to descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature or the knowledge and skill to produce traditional crafts 1. Traditional craftsmanship is perhaps the most tangible manifestation of intangible cultural heritage. However, The General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) meeting in Paris, from 29 September to 17 October 2003, [1]at its 32 nd session gave the convention for safeguarding ICH ,is mainly concerned with skills and knowledge involved in craftsmanship rather than the craft products themselves. Instead of just focusing on preserving craft objects at...

case study on national museum delhi

International Journal of Cultural Property

In recent years an increasing number of state-based heritage protection schemes have asserted ownership over traditional medical knowledge (TMK) through various forms of cultural documentation such as archives, databases, texts, and inventories. Drawing on a close reading of cultural disputes over a single system of TMK-the classical South Asian medical tradition of Ayurveda-the paper traces some of the problems, ambiguities, and paradoxes of making heritage legible. The focus is on three recent state practices by the Indian government to protect Ayurvedic knowledge, each revolving around the production of a different cultural object: the translation of a seventeenth-century Dutch botanical text; the creation of an electronic database known as the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL); and the discovery of an Ayurvedic drug as part of a bioprospecting benefit-sharing scheme. Examined together, they demonstrate that neither TMK, nor Ayurveda, nor even the process of cultural documentation can be treated as monoliths in heritage practice. They also reveal some complexities of heritage protection on the ground and the unintended consequences that policy imperatives and legibility set into motion. As the paper shows, state-based heritage protection schemes inspire surprising counterresponses by indigenous groups that challenge important assumptions about the ownership of TMK, such as locality, community, commensurability, and representation. If recent years have seen the rise in heritage advocacy and assertions of ownership over all forms of knowledge, nowhere is this more evident, or cacophonous, than in the realm of TMK. From bioprospecting for natural drugs to patents on tradi-*Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution.

Heritage & Society

Alexandra Denes

Suzy Harrison

Amareswar Galla

Muzeológia a kultúrne dedičstvo

Marina Strepetova

Literary heritage presents a dialectic relationship between tangible and intangible elements. This complex duality presents challenges for curators, who must try to communicate this immaterial essence through the exhibition language. This article, structured on a two-phase research process, aims to identify the main challenges for literary heritage valorisation and communication in the museum context. First, interviews with specialists in literary heritage and museology from Catalonia and Russia were carried out to identify the main issues to be considered when designing a literary heritage exhibition and managing a literary heritage centre. Second, the websites of three renowned literary European museums were analysed to inspect whether and how these aspects are tackled by these museums and presented to their potential visitors. Results show that, firstly, the duality of literary heritage is vital in the designing of the exhibition; and secondly, that concepts such as human mediati...

Jordi Arcos-Pumarola , Marina Strepetova

Literary heritage presents a dialectic relationship between tangible and intangible elements. This complex duality presents challenges for curators, who must try to communicate this immaterial essence through the exhibition language. This article, structured on a two-phase research process, aims to identify the main challenges for literary heritage valorisation and communication in the museum context. First, interviews with specialists in literary heritage and museology from Catalonia and Russia were carried out to identify the main issues to be considered when designing a literary heritage exhibition and managing a literary heritage centre. Second, the websites of three renowned literary European museums were analysed to inspect whether and how these aspects are tackled by these museums and presented to their potential visitors. Results show that, firstly, the duality of literary heritage is vital in the designing of the exhibition; and secondly, that concepts such as human mediation, literary tourism, and promotion are important in finding new strategies to communicate and visibilise literary heritage intangible meanings.

Jerome McDonough

Sara Gainsford

Degree project for Master of Science with a major in Conservation 2018, 30 HEC Second Cycle 2018:21

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National Museum: a legacy that will be missed Premium

India’s first museum built post-independence is facing an untimely end. a photographer revisits it ahead of its planned demolition.

Updated - October 27, 2023 04:05 pm IST

Published - October 26, 2023 06:20 pm IST

The National Museum at Janpath, with a large sculpture on the left by D.P. Roy Choudhury, the former principal of Madras College of Art

The National Museum at Janpath, with a large sculpture on the left by D.P. Roy Choudhury, the former principal of Madras College of Art | Photo Credit: Ram Rahman

Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation stone of the National Museum in Delhi in 1955, and it subsequently opened in 1960. It was designed by the first Indian chief architect of the Central Public Works Department, G.B. Deolalikar, and was constructed by Bhagwant Singh, son of Sobha Singh who built many of Lutyens’ buildings before independence. Its first director was the American Grace Morley, the former director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Grace Morley at the opening of the National Museum in December 1960. With no walls or barriers, the cyclist in the background shows the access citizens had in those days

Jawaharlal Nehru and Grace Morley at the opening of the National Museum in December 1960. With no walls or barriers, the cyclist in the background shows the access citizens had in those days | Photo Credit: Courtesy the National Museum archive

This was the first museum built by Indians after independence, and symbolised the importance of focusing on the country’s cultural heritage in the idealistic first decade of our freedom. It was also one of the more expensive buildings constructed by the government at a time when resources were thin.

The sculpture gallery at the museum

The sculpture gallery at the museum | Photo Credit: Ram Rahman

History that unites

Designed as a modern museum, the National Museum sports fine stonework and teak wood, coupled with an auditorium and library. It houses national treasures such as discoveries from Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, relics of the Buddha, and wall frescos and silk hangings from the Dunhuang desert caves in China. As school children, we were first exposed to our history in these halls, as were visitors from across India.

The famous ‘Dancing Girl’ from Mohenjo-daro. Grace Morley used Indian silks and fabrics in the display case

The famous ‘Dancing Girl’ from Mohenjo-daro. Grace Morley used Indian silks and fabrics in the display case | Photo Credit: Ram Rahman

Staircase detail, with a Vishnu sculpture on the landing

Staircase detail, with a Vishnu sculpture on the landing | Photo Credit: Ram Rahman

Detailing on the doors

Detailing on the doors | Photo Credit: Ram Rahman

In successive years, special interiors were designed to host international and Indian exhibitions, including Shah Jahan’s Padshahnama (Book of Emperors), a manuscript containing some of the finest Mughal miniatures, from Windsor Castle, a Picasso exhibition from France, and historian and curator Naman Ahuja’s landmark show, The Body in Indian Art .

Besides art and sculpture sourced from across the country, it also has collections of anthropological interest, crafts, armour and weapons, jewellery, and musical instruments. It is a familiar home to art historians and scholars who research in its library and its huge holdings in the basement.

The Chola sculpture gallery, which was specially fitted with modern display cases and lighting. The building could be easily adapted like this

The Chola sculpture gallery, which was specially fitted with modern display cases and lighting. The building could be easily adapted like this | Photo Credit: Ram Rahman

The Indus Valley gallery

The Indus Valley gallery | Photo Credit: Ram Rahman

The anthropology gallery

The anthropology gallery | Photo Credit: Ram Rahman

Must it be demolished?

The recent announcement that the National Museum will be demolished [likely in March 2024, according to several news reports] and the collection shifted to the North and South blocks of the Secretariat, has been met with shock. The question of why a perfectly fine building should be torn down and replaced with an office building has not been publicly justified. Many in the art community are worried about how the many delicate and ancient materials that need high security and careful storage and transport will be handled. The Ministry of Culture has not made any clear statement on the matter, leading to fearful rumours.

The grand courtyard of the National Museum

The grand courtyard of the National Museum | Photo Credit: Ram Rahman

These are a few photographs I took to record an institution we Indians felt was ours, one we cherished and grew up with as an independent and proud nation. They are a fond homage to an institution I hope will not remain only a memory of those years when India was flush with the hope and excitement of a new nation looking to the future.

The writer is a Delhi-based photographer and cultural activist.

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  • You are here: Essays

Crafts Museum in Delhi, India by Charles Correa

6 August 1995 By Robert Powell Essays

Charles_Correa_Terracotta_voite_India

Correa reinterprets the timeless quality of India into a building which resists the obvious western label of museum.

First published in AR August 1995, this piece was republished online in June 2015

The British brought to India the concept of collecting, preserving and displaying objects of nature and art. Dr Jyotindra Jain, the Director of the National Crafts Museum in Delhi, writes a wonderful essay on this theme in a new monograph of Charles Correa’s work entitled The Ritualistic Pathway (1993).

Jain says that ‘the institution of a museum, aimed at housing objects of antiquity and curiosity, is of western origin’. It was never part of the Indian tradition to display fragmented sculptures, rusted swords and paintings out of their context.

Craft_Museum_India_Charles_Correa_Court_Yard

Part of the sequence of modest vernacular courtyards that make up the museum

Indeed, says Jain, ‘broken images were immersed in holy waters, worn-out metal objects were melted down to cast new ones and terracotta votive objects were left to decay and merge with the very earth from which they were created’.

But in following the British example the Indians forgot that, unlike in the West, the past and the present are not so severely divided and, says Jain, ‘blindly adopted the archaeological museum concept’. Dr Jain has considerable ·rapport with Correa, and in this project the architect succeeds in interpreting the timeless quality of India, where tradition and modernity coexist, into a building that resists the label ‘museum’.

Craft_Museum_India_Charles_Correa_Ground_Floor_Plan_

Ground floor plan

Correa has frequently expressed the benefits of open-to-sky spaces. In this low-key building, a metaphor of an Indian street is introduced - along a diagonal axis are three courtyards of different scale and intensity. They are stunning spaces with perceptible changes of mood that make for great architecture.

But it is not simple nostalgia for the past. Correa’s work has always drawn on the vernacular and ‘deep-conscious’ echoes, but it is also modern in its fusion of an underlying orthogonal grid and the internal display spaces of lofty dimensions with the open and semi-open passages covered with tiled roofs and lined with artifacts.

Craft_Museum_India_Charles_Correa_

Elaborately decorated wall

Correa has succeeded in making the museum almost invisible. He creates an environment that is difficult to define or label. It is not institutional and is deliberately self-effacing in its relationship to its ancient neighbour, the Purana Quila. Nor does it overshadow the artists’ village complex alongside.

The processional route through the building is constantly changing in an intricate kaleidoscope of space and light. It is a journey of discovery and there is a deliberately unfinished feeling about the museum … exactly as intended. What does finished mean? Merely a new beginning.

Crafts museum, Delhi, India

Architect: Charles Correa Photographs: Joo Ann Foh

case study on national museum delhi

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No ‘storage place’, shifting of National Museum deferred

The National Museum in Janpath, New Delhi.

NEW DELHI: The Central government’s plan to shut down the National Museum at the current location in the national capital and shifting of its antiquities to some other facility or building, has apparently been put on hold, this newspaper has learnt.

According to museum officials privy to the matter, the plan was put on the backburner because the authority could not find a suitable space to stock the over 2 lakh heritage articles in possession of the current museum, which was established in 1960.

Following uproar over the reports pertaining to the demolition of the existing museum building at Janpath to pave way for new constructions as part of the Central Vista redevelopment project, two officials from the Ministry of Culture took stock of the heritage objects on display at the National Museum sometime in November. During the visit, the museum officials apprised them about the risk associated with the shipping of antiquities in a haste, citing the case study of a similar exercise carried out at Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum in London.

“The proposal has been put in abeyance for the time being. The officials from the ministry, who visited the museum, were informed that it took three-four years to relocate antiquities at V&A Museum and their attention was drawn towards a short time window for taking objects in the National Museum to other places,” said officials, who wished not to be quoted.

BR Mani, director general of the National Museum, was not available for comment. The call and messages sent to Govind Mohan, secretary, Ministry of Culture, did not elicit a reply.

The museum authority was contemplating start shifting of objects in batches by November. The plan was to vacate the premises and demolish the structure by March after removing antiquities

The ministry officials added that the movement of artefacts would be done keeping in mind all the Standard Operating Procedures issued while loaning an object from one museum to another. They said the security aspects will be followed as per the protocol.

However, they said that the decision regarding the closure of the National Museum for visitors and researchers has not been taken yet. They also indicated that the present National Museum building might not be razed down.

In May last year, the Prime Minister had announced that a new museum would be set up in North and South Blocks, covering 1.17 lakh square metres. The museum officials said that movement of antiquities twice — from the museum to another place, and then to new one to come up in South and North Blocks — is not advisable.

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Issue 3, Vol 1

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Museuming Modern Art NGMA: The Indian Case-Study

This brief essay on India’s National Gallery of Modern Art traces the early years of the institution from when it was set up in 1954. It was an important site for the art world as much as for the newly independent nation state declaring its commitment to modernity.

In recent years there has been a considerable interest in Indian museums and their relationship to audiences. Appadurai and Breckenridge in their seminal essay ‘Museums are Good to Think’ look at the museum’s role in the “elaboration of the public sphere in non-western nations.” 1 The authors are interested in the transformation of the museum site under global impulses where “new visual formations link heritage politics to spectacle, tourism and entertainment.” 2 The sub-category of the art museum, however, does not present them with many possibilities when it comes to mapping contemporary public gaze in Indian life. They write, “…Except for a small minority in India and for a very short period of its history and in very few museums there, art in the current western sense is not a meaningful category…. In place of art other categories of objects dominate, such as handicraft, technology, history and heritage.” 3

While not disputing the marginality of the art museum in terms of the general public it draws, in the Indian institutional landscape, this essay chooses precisely such an institution that focuses on the category of ‘art’. This emblematic institution, the only of its kind, was set up in 1954 by the Government of India. From 1938 when such an institution was first proposed by an artist-based organisation, the All India Fine Arts and Craft Society (AIFACS), through the sub-sequent artists’ conferences that delineated the nature and scope of this institution, to its establishment by the government in 1954, and through the political leadership and the museum directors that determined its contours, and of course the parallel developments in art practice that it was trying to account for and represent, the NGMA has been subject to different pressures and imaginings. In the course of this unfolding history it has grappled with ideas of modernism, nationalism, tradition and internationalism and equally tried to address questions of identity and Indian-ness.

Proposing a National Art Gallery – The AIFACS Version

By early 20th century one can see a complex relay of styles, institutions, publications and exhibitions emerging in the Indian art scene. And it is from within this community of artists and critics that the first demands of a national art gallery were made. Unlike the National Museum which was a key project for a government body like the Archaeological Survey of India from 1912 onwards, the first proposal for a National Art Gallery was made by a Delhi-based artists’ organisation, the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS), in 1938. In the subsequent years, however, AIFACS claims were diluted by the factions that arose amongst the artists, with the newly set up All India Association of Fine Arts, Bombay putting forth its own agency as a central organisation at the Third All India Art conference in 19484. The All India Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta, also proposed converting the Arts Section of the Indian Museum into a National Art Gallery.

It was left to the 1949 Art Conference at Calcutta, organised by Government of India, to resolve the matter once and for all. The Conference called for the formation of a Central Advisory Board of Art (formed in 1950) and passed a resolution for the early establishment of National Art Gallery and the improvement of National Museum as well as the formation of the three Akademis as part of a Sub Commission for Culture of the Indian National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO.

The first attempt at the setting up of the National Art Gallery was made by an artist group whose founders owed their allegiance to the Bengal School and were, in keeping with the School’s ideals, keen to institutionalise the category of ‘national art’. The Bengal Schools move to identify an indigenist form of art with national sovereignty had a specific function in the anticolonial struggle. But with the passage of time, agendas had shifted, and from imagining itself as a site of resistance, India was now assuming a new authority as a post-colonial nation. AIFACS tried to address this shift by envisaging an art museum based on mass support, which organised art exhibitions as appendages to official conferences and meetings, and devised pragmatic roles for artists as makers of public commemorative art and assistants in government-driven mass education schemes. But the category of the national modern was being recalibrated by various members of the artist community, and above all by the state, and the museum would now be taken on a different course.

Institutionalising the Modern

Already by 1947-48 there were signs of the state’s interest in this project with Nehru personally intervening in the major purchase of the Amrita Sher-Gil collection and the more minor one of a few Brunner paintings. 5 These, among other moves, by the Indian state in general and Nehru in particular, made evident the desire to centralise and nationalise the modern art museum.

Meanwhile another sequence was unfolding at the Burlington House, London with the ceremonial 1947-1948 exhibition titled ‘The Arts of India and Pakistan.’ Organised by Royal Academy of Art, to mark the transfer of power in British India, it was followed by another version of the exhibition, ‘Masterpieces of Indian Art,’ at the Government House, New Delhi in the winter of 1948. In her extensive essay on these ceremonial exhibitions that eventually led to the formation of the National Museum, Tapati Guha-Thakurta shows how the London exhibition was bracketed by sections on ‘British Artists in India’ at the start, and ‘Modern Paintings, Drawings and Sculptures’ at the end. 6 The catalogue rather apologetically acknowledged a motley section of Bengal school, Amrita Sher-Gil, Zainul Abedin, N S Bendre, F N Souza, Dhanraj Bhagat and Kanwal Krishna, which were “nothing comparable in aesthetic interest with the great achievements of Indian sculptors,” 7 but were included nonetheless to present a complete image of Indian art abroad. However, neither of these sections was carried over to the subsequent exhibition held in New Delhi at the Government House. Here one sees a definite exclusion of the modern from “this spectacle of India’s art heritage. …and we find ourselves fully in the grips of an art historical past.” 8 The modern was bypassed and the great nation was conjured exclusively through its ancient and medieval art heritage.

While the mandate of the ‘national’ was being handed to the art objects from India’s great past, the state had a different role in mind for modern art and by extension the NGMA. It was seen as one among a series of cultural institutions that were set up in the post-colonial landscape of the 1940s-50s which served to dislodge the modern from the discourse of the national. Geeta Kapur notes how culture becomes an important means to disentangle the modern from the nationalist polemic. “The latter had often to speak in the name of tradition even as it covertly strengthened the desire for the modern. While national struggle had attempted to simulate a civilisational quest, the nation state was bound to privilege culture as a means of cohering contemporaniety.” 9 Under Nehru’s leadership a whole set of institutions were founded that carried the overall mandate of the modern. They were part of what Partha Chatterjee terms India’s statist utopia. 10

National Gallery of Modern Art was formally inaugurated by the Vice President of India, Dr S Radhakrishnan, on March 29, 1954 in New Delhi. It was located in Jaipur House which had been originally built as the winter palace of the Maharaja of Jaipur in the 1930s. German scholar and museologist Hermann Goetz was brought over from the Baroda Museum where he had been the director between 1943 and 1954, and given charge of the institution. The Gallery opened with an exhibition of contemporary sculpture apart from showcasing its initial collection of around 200 works which consisted of paintings by Amrita Sher-Gil, Rabindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, Nandalal Bose and MAR Chugtai, among others. The works displayed at the sculpture exhibition also doubled as the First National Exhibition of Modern Art 11 and sculptor D P Roy Chowdhury’s Triumph of Labour won the first prize and was commissioned to be made as a public sculpture on the lawns of the museum.

National Gallery of Modern Art – The Sher-Gil Collection

The core of the NGMA collection was without doubt a suite of 96 paintings by artist Amrita Sher-Gil that came into the hands of the state as early as 1948. In many ways, it is this cache of paintings that determined the course of the institution. The search for a reconfigured national modern that could translate the impulses and the potential of the ‘new paradigm’ found resolution, as much by design as by default, in the figure of Amrita Sher-Gil 12 .

In 1947 when Amrita Sher-Gil’s husband Dr Victor Eagen offered 33 paintings to the Government of India for sale, the Finance Ministry rejected the proposal to procure the collection given the price. The matter might have ended prematurely but for the insistence of Sher-Gil’s father, Umrao Singh Sher-Gil, who was keen to remove the paintings from Eagen’s possession. Umrao Singh offered to gift a large body of Sher-Gil’s works to the nation but on the precondition that the latter was able to obtain the paintings in her husband’s collection. In a letter to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, dated 23 April 1948, Umrao Singh wrote, “Most of her earlier juvenile work, when she was at School of Art in Paris, is with us. We wish to give them freely to the nation, along with sketches and studies which Amrita had intended to destroy. They serve along with her early works to show the development of her art and talent…. But if her later works are not actually acquired by our nation, then what good will the old style work, which she herself did not value, be.” 13

At this point, Nehru intervened to ensure the acquisition of the Sher-Gil paintings. He also took up the matter with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, on March 7, 1948, “I think it desirable for government to acquire her paintings as a whole. Just a few chosen ones would not be good enough. It would be possible to get the paintings from Amrita’s parents without payment provided we make it clear we are getting the collection from the others also. As for the husband, he is not very well off and can easily sell them separately and may well do so if we delay.” 14

Thus we see a number of events converging–ranging from Sher-Gil’s charismatic artistic persona and untimely death, the subsequent family feud and Nehru’s personal intervention in resolving it, the sheer range of the collection, the fragile material conditions of many works– to place the Sher-Gil collection at the centre of the Gallery, six years before its actual formation.

In 1953, the Gallery had a nucleus of 163 paintings consisting predominantly of Amrita Sher-Gil paintings, apart from collections of the other ‘three pioneering modernists’–Rabindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy and Gaganendranath Tagore. The press reviews of the opening of NGMA in 1954 lavished praise on the Sher-Gil rooms (the only air conditioned rooms in the Gallery because of the fragile material conditions of the paintings) for their complete chronological display. Art critic Charles Fabri wrote, “The glory of the collection is Amrita Sher-Gil…. Paintings that are from her childhood to her years in Hungary, Budapest and Paris, right upto her last, unfinished canvas found on her easel.” 15

In the initial years the Sher-Gil collection, which came into its possession much before the formation of the actual institution, made the Gallery align with a modernist practice that was progressive, cosmopolitan and in conversation with an international modernism. It was a practice that was supported by a generation of powerful writers and intellectuals like Mulk Raj Anand and W G Archer who were close to the political establishment. But despite this ‘solid core of greatness,’ 16 the emphasis within the Gallery remained on marking the moments of modernism’s origin. Accordingly, it enshrined the four initiators of modern art in India, Rabindranath Tagore, Amrita Sher-Gil, Jamini Roy and Gaganendranath Tagore, even as the new generation of Progressive Artists’ Groups sprung up all over the country. The mandate of making sense of the current art movements was handed over to another cultural institution set up in the same year as NGMA – Lalit Kala Akademi (LKA) – which was an autonomous body governed by artists, scholars and government nominees but without any government interference in its activities. The NGMA thus absolved itself from needing to respond to current art scene or the needs of the artists, working with a more classical understanding of a museum as a historical and highly insulated institution. The LKA played the role of the democratic state institution responding to the artists’ needs – showcasing latest trends with its annual national exhibitions and creating a climate of state patronage that gave equal representation to different schools and movements. The success and failure of this enterprise is, of course, another story.

The text is an excerpt from the essay ‘Museumising Modern Art, NGMA: the Indian Case-Study’ to be published in the upcoming volume tentatively titled No Touching No Spitting No Praying: Museum Cultures of South Asia, Routledge, edited by Dr Kavita Singh and Dr Saloni Mathur.

References and Footnotes

  • Arjun Appadurai & Carol Breckenridge, ‘Museums are Good to Think’, in Representing the Nation: A Reader, Eds. David Boswell & Jessica Evans, Routledge, London & New York, 1999, p. 418
  • Ibid, p. 406
  • The All India Association of Fine Arts, Bombay was set up in 1946 with G Venkatachalam as president and members like Karl Khandalvala. The Association organised the 3rd All India Conference for Arts in 1948 because it noted that the first two conferences in Delhi had not been able to form a central art organisation that was wholly representative. They received a sum of Rs 21 lakhs for arts, education and cultural activities from the Government of Bombay. They declared that arts did not depend on official support alone but needed individuals and groups to come together spontaneously. If AIFACS was interested in being an official body, AIFACS was asking for the status of an autonomous artist association.
  • B P Singh, ‘Arts, Cultural Pageants and the state: The Nehru-Azad Dialogue’, India’s Culture, the State, the Arts and Beyond, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2009, p. 100 – 111. Singh looks into the purchase of the Brunner paintings by Jawaharlal Nehru. In June 1948, the PM visited Nainital and chanced upon paintings of two Hungarian artists Sass Brunner and her daughter Elizabeth Brunner. Touched by their sensitivity, he purchased a few of them including the one of Mahatma Gandhi in meditation, for his own collection. On his return to Delhi, he wrote to Abul Kalam Azad (14 June, 1948) recommending the paintings be acquired by Government of India. Azad referred the matter to the Ministry of Education (MOE) who solicited the help of R N Chakravarty, chief artist in Publications Division, MOE, and Barada Ukil for their opinions on the paintings. Both stated that the works were mediocre and did not deserve the price being asked. Nehru joined in to counter this assessment of the artists. The matter finally ended with the Government of India buying the works but not before the Ministry of Finance emphasised the need for prior clearance before making any financial commitments. It eventually led to the constitution of the art purchase committee for museums under the chairmanship of Vice President of India, with experts like Moti Chandra, Karl Khandalvala, Rai Krishnadas and others.
  • Tapati Guha-Thakurta, ‘The Demands of Independence: From a National Exhibition to a National Museum’, Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Post-Colonial India , Columbia University Press, New York and Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2004, p 277
  • Ibid. quoted by Guha-Thakurta from the catalogue Exhibition of Art, chiefly from the Dominions of India and Pakistan, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, London, 1947-48, (London: Royal Academy, 1947) p. 192 – 195 held at the Government House
  • Ibid. p 274 9. Geeta Kapur, ‘Sovereign Subject: Ray’s Appu’, When was Modernism, Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2000, p. 202
  • Ibid p. 201
  • The competition is referred to in the Hindustan Standard , 7 July 1957
  • The flamboyant artist of mixed Indo–Hungarian parentage, Amrita Sher-Gil studied at the Ecole des Beaux, Paris, between 1929 and 1934. In ’33 she exhibited at the Grand Salon, where she won a medal for her painting Young Girls and was also elected an Associate. She returned to India at the end of 1934, taking on the mantle of an Indian artist. She died at the very young age of 29 in December 1941, a few days before her major solo exhibition in Lahore. Her death was mourned at an almost national scale and public figures like Nehru and Gandhi sent condolences to the Sher-Gil family.
  • Letter by Umrao Singh Sher-Gil to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Minister of Education, GOI, dated 23 April 1948, F.178–16/48–G–2, National Archives, New Delhi, unpublished
  • Ibid, letter by Nehru to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Minister of Education, TOI dated 7 March, 1948 15. Charles Fabri, ‘review of NGMA opening’, Marg , Volume 8, No. 3, 2nd Quarter, 1954
  • File on W G Archer’s letter to Ashfaque Husain, F.3-112/54 – A.2, National Archives, Government of India, 1954, unpublished. W G Archer, who had served from 1931 – 1948 as a civil servant in India, returned to England after India’s independence to become the Keeper of the Indian collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Well respected for his research and scholarship on Indian folk, popular and miniature traditions, as well modern art, he was commissioned between January 2 and March 26, 1954 by the Ministry of Education to conduct a three month survey of national, state and art galleries and provide suggestions for their better administration. Archer complimented the government on its Sher-Gil collection which he described as “a superb achievement, giving the Gallery a solid core of greatness”. At the same time, he stated candidly, “It has to be remembered that the actual number of living artists whose works really deserve to be represented is probably small and it takes a great deal of courage to recognise originality.”

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About Author

case study on national museum delhi

Vidya Shivadas is a curator and art critic based in New Delhi. Working at the Vadehra Art Gallery since 2002, she has curated exhibitions like Faiza Butt, Ruby Chishti, Masooma Syed (three Pakistani women artists) (April 2009), Fluid Structures: Gender and Abstraction in India (1970s – 2008) (April 2008), Objects: Making/Unmaking (April 2007) and Are We Like This Only (March 2005). In 2009 she was a guest curator at Devi Art Foundation and worked on the solo exhibition of Bangladeshi artist Mahbubur Rahman. In her researcher capacity, she is interested in the relationship between art institutions and art practice.

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    Unlike the National Museum which was a key project for a government body like the Archaeological Survey of India from 1912 onwards, the first proposal for a National Art Gallery was made by a Delhi-based artists' organisation, the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS), in 1938. ... NGMA: the Indian Case-Study' to be published in ...

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    case study national museum - Free download as Word Doc (.doc), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. The publication unit of the National Museum produces various publications for different audiences, including books for children, general visitors, and scholars. It is headed by a Keeper and has six staff positions. In addition to art publications on Indian art and culture ...

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    Ngma Case Study - Free download as Powerpoint Presentation (.ppt / .pptx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or view presentation slides online. The National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi is one of India's largest modern art museums. It was established in 1954 and is located in Jaipur House on Rajpath. The museum exhibits around 4,000 paintings, graphics, and sculptures from the 1850s.

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    The National Crafts Museum in Delhi displays handicrafts from across India in a building inspired by ancient Hindu and Buddhist temples. It is organized around a central pathway revealing spaces along a pedestrian spine. The Indian Museum in Kolkata was established in 1814 and houses over 100,000 objects across three floors in a neoclassical-style building divided into galleries. Both museums ...