What ails the Indian museum at this time?

What’s a museum, actually? A constructing that homes objects? A temple of information? A vault of the previous? Or a theatre of the current? The solutions are as advanced because the establishment’s foundational contradiction. Museums declare to protect and defend, however additionally they curate and assemble. The query of publicness is vital. For many Indians, a go to to the museum remains to be a uncommon occasion — extra faculty journey than weekend ritual.

A museum’s energy lies not simply in its artefacts, however in its viewers. We should ask: what sort of historical past do we would like instructed? Who will get to do the telling? Can we, as residents in a democracy, demand extra nuance, extra reality? Can museums grow to be pedagogical areas, the place historical past is not only consumed however interrogated. The place younger folks be taught not simply what occurred, however why it issues, and who it mattered to.

The politics of show

India is present process a museum-building renaissance. Throughout the nation, state and personal actors are investing in bold cultural establishments — from the redevelopment of the Nationwide Museum in New Delhi to regional centres of reminiscence and artwork. But, beneath the glossy structure and nation-branding optimism lies an pressing query: what’s being constructed, by whom, and for whom? What’s being remembered, and what’s being erased?

In line with the Ministry of Tradition, over 100 new experiential museums are within the pipeline, though particulars about their themes, timelines, and areas stay largely unspecified. The Nationwide Museum is about to be relocated as part of the Central Vista redevelopment mission, however there isn’t a public readability but on the destiny of its artefacts — one of many largest and most important collections within the nation.

Museums have at all times formed public reminiscence. Because the state more and more centralises management over historic narrative, they danger changing into not an area of studying however of persuasion. The problem, then, is not only to fill galleries with new tales, however to reimagine the very thought of the establishment.

From colonial cupboards to nationwide canons

India’s earliest museums had been constructed by colonial powers as devices of classification and management. They displayed conquest as tradition, and positioned Indian craft and labour inside a framework that rendered it primitive, ornamental, or ethnographic.

Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, director of Mumbai’s Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum (BDL), reminds us that these establishments had been by no means impartial. In her essay ‘Decolonising the Museum’, she writes that colonial museums functioned to “current the coloniser as benefactor whose techniques of organisation and codification represented a greater mannequin for improvement”. The BDL itself, previously the Victoria and Albert Museum, Mumbai, was stuffed with clay collectible figurines, dioramas, and ornamental objects meant to showcase India’s “conventional” guide abilities — helpful to colonial commerce, however stripped of mental or inventive legitimacy.

Tasneem Zakaria Meht

Since its restoration and reopening in 2008, BDL has sought to reverse this narrative. Mehta’s curatorial imaginative and prescient actively foregrounds the Indian artist and craftsperson, reinterpreting the museum’s colonial collections by way of modern cultural follow. The museum’s ongoing collaboration with modern artists similar to Reena Saini Kallat, whose 2025 retrospective Cartographies of the Unseen addressed themes of injustice and human hubris, displays BDL’s dedication to decolonial and inclusive storytelling.

Past preservation

However how will we construct new museums — conceptually, not simply architecturally — that reply to at this time’s social and political complexities? On the Museum of Artwork & Images (MAP), Bengaluru, this query is on the coronary heart of curatorial follow. “We’re at a second the place we have to recognise that museums usually are not simply areas to protect heritage, but additionally areas that assist us perceive the current by way of the lens of the previous,” says Arnika Ahldag, director of exhibitions and curation. “At MAP, we see this as a duty — to problem dominant narratives and amplify voices which have traditionally been marginalised.” In 2023, MAP introduced VISIBLE/INVISIBLE, an exhibition that critically examined the portrayal of girls in artwork, highlighting each visibility and erasure in historic narratives.

Arnika Ahldag

Shailesh Kulal, inclusion supervisor, main the VISIBLE/INVISIBLE guided stroll

“It’s about shifting from the museum as gatekeeper to the museum as a collaborative area for dialogue,” she provides. “We frequently present objects [like kanthas] that folks might need in their very own houses. That form of familiarity invitations participation, not passivity.” Regardless of such initiatives, there stays a must additional discover different marginalised views, similar to these from Dalit and Adivasi communities, to make sure a extra inclusive curatorial method.

Who will get to curate tradition?

This query of relevance is inseparable from energy, and participation is not only about show — it’s about voice. Who curates? Who funds? Shaleen Wadhwana, an unbiased curator, arts educator and former marketing consultant with the India Artwork Truthful, places it bluntly: “India could be very socially stratified, so I’m hesitant to make use of phrases like ‘actually public, inclusive and accessible’ as a result of that’s extremely tough to attain. Ideologically, accessibility implies that funders solely fund, and don’t dictate content material. It additionally means your employees should mirror the variety of the general public. It’s not simply the curator — it’s the guard, the educator, the translator, the individual within the archive.”

Shaleen Wadhwana

Her critique cuts deep. Many new museums could also be visually dazzling — such because the upcoming Yuge Yugeen Bharat Nationwide Museum — however their inner cultures usually stay opaque, with little public readability on curatorial route, institutional staffing, or how narratives are being formed. Publicness isn’t nearly ticket costs or weekend programming. It’s about who’s allowed to take part in narrative-making at each degree.

Listening, not lecturing

Each MAP and BDL embody a shift from presenting information to listening; treating audiences as cultural co-authors. “Up to now, museums instructed audiences what they thought they wanted to know,” says Kamini Sawhney, former director of MAP. The programming tended to be didactic, formal, and largely in English. The obscureness was echoed within the tone of the labels, too: verbose, and in hard-to-read tiny font. For a lot of guests, the expertise was alienating — not solely due to the language, however as a result of few knew how to take a look at a museum object. What do you ask of a 200-year-old textile? With out interpretation that’s accessible, multilingual, and context-rich, viewers are left to both quietly admire or silently withdraw.

Kamini Sawhney
| Photograph Credit score:
Prarthana Shetty

And with out significant relationships with the general public, museums danger changing into irrelevant. “Public establishments must mirror on points that matter to the group. In any other case, you find yourself speaking to your self,” Sawhney provides. This implies constructing belief, and belief is sluggish work. It’s constructed by way of transparency (about funding, course of, and narrative selections), multilingual supplies, responsive training programmes, and a willingness to take a seat with discomfort.

India has over 1,000 museums — most of them public, and lots of nonetheless working inside inflexible, object-led frameworks. However a few are reimagining what they are often. Mumbai’s year-old Museum of Options centres youngsters as co-creators — designing displays that encourage play, empathy, and problem-solving.

Museum of Answer

In Amritsar, the Partition Museum foregrounds lived reminiscence and oral histories to relate a traumatic previous with empathy and nuance. And whereas not a museum within the conventional sense, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale has remodeled how Indian publics encounter modern artwork — embedding it in city area, group life, and important discourse. These stay uncommon efforts. However taken collectively, they provide a glimpse of what responsive, plural, and public-facing museums may appear to be.

The  Partition Museum
| Photograph Credit score:
Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

An area for multiplicity

No museum is impartial. Each exhibition is a sequence of selections: what to indicate, what to omit, and easy methods to body it. Ahldag is forthright about this curatorial labour. “We want extra folks understood how a lot museum-making is about negotiation and care,” she says. “It’s by no means impartial. Each determination entails navigating histories, ethics, and our personal positions of energy.”

That is significantly pressing in India at this time, the place state-endorsed narratives more and more flatten complexity into celebration. In such a context, merely holding area for multiplicity turns into a radical act. “Curating is not only choice; it’s an ongoing dialog with artists, collaborators, and audiences,” she says. “We have now to stay open to suggestions, even when it challenges us.”

Reena Kallat’s Cartographies of the Unseen at BDL
| Photograph Credit score:

Trying to the long run

So what ought to the Indian museum grow to be? It should be greater than a constructing, it should be a way of studying, unlearning, coexisting with discomfort. It should be an area of friction, the place previous and current wrestle in full view of the general public. As Wadhwana places it: “No matter what the Centre is doing, unbiased curators and cultural producers will at all times have the duty to create area for inventive thought, debate, critique — and sure, dissent.” That duty solely grows heavier when the state seeks to flatten historic narrative into celebratory consensus.

A customer interacting with the tactile show at MAP’s Ticket Tika Chaap

The Indian museum at this time just isn’t a solution, it’s a proposition. A website of chance, rivalry, pedagogy, and restore. “In the end, the museum needs to be a website of chance, not of perfected narratives,” Wadhwana says. “The second we deal with it as completed, as fastened, we’ve failed its public operate.”

The general public has a job to play right here, too. We should demand transparency, problem silence, and see ourselves not as guests, however as members. We have now the best — and the duty — to ask: whose historical past is that this? And what are we being requested to neglect? The museum should assist us keep in mind. Not simply what was, however what may nonetheless be.

The essayist and educator writes on design and tradition.