What ails the Indian museum immediately?

What is a museum, actually? A constructing that homes objects? A temple of data? A vault of the previous? Or a theatre of the current? The solutions are as advanced as the establishment’s foundational contradiction. Museums declare to protect and defend, however in addition they curate and assemble. The query of publicness is vital. For most Indians, a go to to the museum continues to be a uncommon occasion — extra college 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 advised? Who will get to do the telling? Can we, as residents in a democracy, demand extra nuance, extra reality? Can museums turn into pedagogical areas, the place historical past is not only consumed however interrogated. Where younger individuals 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. Across the nation, state and personal actors are investing in bold cultural establishments — from the redevelopment of the National Museum in New Delhi to regional centres of reminiscence and artwork. Yet, beneath the smooth structure and nation-branding optimism lies an pressing query: what’s being constructed, by whom, and for whom? What is being remembered, and what’s being erased?

According to the Ministry of Culture, over 100 new experiential museums are in the pipeline, though particulars about their themes, timelines, and areas stay largely unspecified. The National Museum is about to be relocated as part of the Central Vista redevelopment venture, however there isn’t any public readability but on the destiny of its artefacts — certainly one of the largest and most vital collections in the nation.

Museums have at all times formed public reminiscence. As the state more and more centralises management over historic narrative, they threat turning 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 “present the coloniser as benefactor whose systems of organisation and codification represented a better model for development”. The BDL itself, previously the Victoria and Albert Museum, Mumbai, was full of clay collectible figurines, dioramas, and ornamental objects meant to showcase India’s “traditional” handbook expertise — helpful to colonial commerce, however stripped of mental or creative 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 up to date cultural observe. The museum’s ongoing collaboration with up to date artists corresponding 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.

Beyond preservation

But how can we construct new museums — conceptually, not simply architecturally — that reply to immediately’s social and political complexities? At the Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), Bengaluru, this query is at the coronary heart of curatorial observe. “We’re at a moment where we need to recognise that museums are not just spaces to preserve heritage, but also spaces that help us understand the present through the lens of the past,” says Arnika Ahldag, director of exhibitions and curation. “At MAP, we see this as a responsibility — to challenge dominant narratives and amplify voices that have historically been marginalised.” In 2023, MAP offered VISIBLE/INVISIBLE, an exhibition that critically examined the portrayal of ladies 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 space for dialogue,” she provides. “We often show objects [like kanthas] that people might have in their own homes. That kind of familiarity invites participation, not passivity.” Despite such initiatives, there stays a must additional discover different marginalised views, corresponding to these from Dalit and Adivasi communities, to make sure a extra inclusive curatorial strategy.

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 impartial curator, arts educator and former marketing consultant with the India Art Fair, places it bluntly: “India is very socially stratified, so I’m hesitant to use words like ‘truly public, inclusive and accessible’ because that’s incredibly difficult to achieve. Ideologically, accessibility means that funders only fund, and don’t dictate content. It also means your staff must reflect the diversity of the public. It’s not just the curator — it’s the guard, the educator, the translator, the person in the archive.”

Shaleen Wadhwana

Her critique cuts deep. Many new museums could also be visually dazzling — corresponding to the upcoming Yuge Yugeen Bharat National Museum — however their inside 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

Both MAP and BDL embody a shift from presenting data to listening; treating audiences as cultural co-authors. “In the past, museums told audiences what they thought they needed to know,” says Kamini Sawhney, former director of MAP. The programming tended to be didactic, formal, and largely in English. The obscureness was echoed in the tone of the labels, too: verbose, and in hard-to-read tiny font. For many 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? Without interpretation that’s accessible, multilingual, and context-rich, viewers are left to both quietly admire or silently withdraw.

Kamini Sawhney
| Photo Credit:
Prarthana Shetty

And with out significant relationships with the public, museums threat turning into irrelevant. “Public institutions need to reflect on issues that matter to the community. Otherwise, you end up talking to yourself,” Sawhney provides. This means constructing belief, and belief is gradual work. It’s constructed by transparency (about funding, course of, and narrative choices), multilingual supplies, responsive schooling programmes, and a willingness to sit down with discomfort.

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

Museum of Solution

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 in the conventional sense, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale has remodeled how Indian publics encounter up to date artwork — embedding it in city house, neighborhood life, and demanding discourse. These stay uncommon efforts. But taken collectively, they provide a glimpse of what responsive, plural, and public-facing museums may appear to be.

The  Partition Museum
| Photo Credit:
Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

An area for multiplicity

No museum is impartial. Every exhibition is a collection of decisions: what to point out, what to omit, and the best way to body it. Ahldag is forthright about this curatorial labour. “We wish more people understood how much museum-making is about negotiation and care,” she says. “It’s never neutral. Every decision involves navigating histories, ethics, and our own positions of power.”

This is especially pressing in India immediately, the place state-endorsed narratives more and more flatten complexity into celebration. In such a context, merely holding house for multiplicity turns into a radical act. “Curating is not just selection; it’s an ongoing conversation with artists, collaborators, and audiences,” she says. “We have to remain open to feedback, even when it challenges us.”

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

Looking to the future

So what ought to the Indian museum turn into? It have to be greater than a constructing, it have to be a technique of studying, unlearning, coexisting with discomfort. It have to be an area of friction, the place previous and current wrestle in full view of the public. As Wadhwana places it: “Regardless of what the Centre is doing, independent curators and cultural producers will always have the responsibility to create space for artistic thought, debate, critique — and yes, dissent.” That accountability 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 immediately is just not a solution, it’s a proposition. A web site of risk, rivalry, pedagogy, and restore. “Ultimately, the museum has to be a site of possibility, not of perfected narratives,” Wadhwana says. “The moment we treat it as finished, as fixed, we’ve failed its public function.”

The public has a job to play right here, too. We should demand transparency, problem silence, and see ourselves not as guests, however as contributors. We have the proper — and the accountability — to ask: whose historical past is that this? And what are we being requested to overlook? 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.