Managing Museums: A Study of the National Museums, New Delhi

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Demand for a National Museum of India was first voiced on 26th July 1837 by Sir James Princep, then Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, in a Memorandum to the east India Company. But it was not until 15th August 1949 that the National Museum was set up. it was started at the Rashtrapati Bhawan with a nucleus of about five hundred collections from an exhibition of Art of India and Pakistan, displayed at the Burlington House London, immediately after Independence. The Museum shifted to its new building on 18th December 1960. The Museum has now more than two hundred thousand collections, some of them rarest of the rare, but hardly for percent of the collections are displayed. Not more than hundred fifty thousand people visit the Museum annually, compared to nearly 60 million visitors to the Louvre in Paris and 50 million to the British Museum of London. Surely there are lots to be improved for the management of this premier cultural institution of the country. In this first ever book on the national Museum of Delhi, Dr. lalima Dhar Chakrabarti traces the genesis of the Museum and makes an in depth and incisive analysis of the various constraints and challenges of managing the museum and develops a set of performance indicators on museum Access and Admission, Collection and Documentation, Display and Exhibitions, Research and Publication, Education, Finance, personnel and other related matters. The book would be valuable addition to the limited publications on museum management in India.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lalima Dhar Chakrabarti

Lalima Basu (nee Dhar Chakrabarti) did Masters in Museology and Ancient Indian History and Culture from University of Calcutta followed by specialized training at the International Centre for Conservation and restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) Rome to become a conservator of paper manuscripts and miniature paintings. She did start career as a Conservator at the national Museum of India at New Delhi, but left the job to join her husband in Jammu & Kashmir where she spent almost twenty years, traveling from one corner to and cultural objects and documenting them. The neglect of these objects motivated her to set up the J & K heritage Foundation, which took interesting initiatives in creating awareness about the preservation and conservation of the cultural property in all the three regions of the State. She returned to Delhi in the late nineties, reviving her interest in the national Museum. The result was this pioneering study for which she was awarded the PhD degree by the national Museum Institute of History of Art, Conservation and Museology. Lalima has a flair for learning languages. She knows Urdu, Arabic, Persian, German and Italian apart from her mother tongue Bengali and picked up spoken Dogri, Kashmiri and ladakhi. Her husband is a senior officer of the Indian Administrative service. Her daughter is doing masters in Massachusetts Institute of technology while her son is studying Engineering in Pune.