CASE STUDIES
The Centre for Museums had earlier put a call out seeking interesting case study proposals based on the Indian museum sector. This Museum Week, we would like to share a snippet of the case study proposals that have been selected!
Policies for Generation of Creative Culture Economy and Museum Management: A case study of Mehrangarh Fort Museum
by Alishah A.
A Museum’s architecture plays a crucial role in its approach toward visitor’s experience, interaction and the Museum’s collection. Adaptive use of Heritage Buildings as Museums is an exciting challenge to manage and maintain a museum. Mehrangarh Fort Museum can be considered one of the most versatile and well-managed museum forts that runs a bustling creative economy with its operations.
This case study aims to focus on the sustainable creative economy the Mehrangarh Museum Trust runs and its approach toward the inclusion of the local community. The study will also look at partnerships and opportunities the trust offers for heritage, conservation, and Museum professionals. The study also aims to evaluate responsible museum management practices and resources available at the Museum.
The Museum has strived to create a remarkable example of the cultural economy by hosting a fest like the Jodhpur RIFF. It invites international audiences, yet makes a point to employ and support the local community and arts of the city. The Fort Museum is a tourist-friendly heritage complex. The management has paid attention to the accessibility of the visitors, adventure activities within the fort complex, and availability of facilities: certified guides, cafes, lifts, trained museum staff, shopping experiences, etc.
Mehrangarh Fort Museum also maintains the most well-equipped conservation labs and accessible storage of Museum objects. Often, Museum's maximum collections are housed in storage, and lack of resources and improper storage facilities results in the loss of cultural property. The trust at the Museum practices responsible storage operations using traditional preservation material setting another example of sustainable preservation practices in the Museum.
The novelty of the proposed research
The culture and tourism sector in India has been subjected to insufficient funds. The pandemic added to the paucity of allocation of funds towards the culture sector. The 2021-22 budget for the tourism and culture sector was slashed by ₹ 4,620 million. The pandemic has intensified the need for scrutinized arts administration and the development of a creative economy in India.
Mehrangarh Fort Museum is an important example to understand the evolution of the Museum’s practices and adaptation towards creating a sustainable economy for the Museum and inclusive-interactive visitors experience.
The sky is the limit for the boom of the creative cultural economy in India. The case study will enhance the repository on Museum practices in India contributing to the empowering of Museums and creating Museums as inclusive spaces supporting the community and contributing to the tourism economy of India. The research will also contribute to developing an in-depth understanding of the drafting of cultural policies and Museum management as per the regional context.
Methodology
- The primary data will be collected through direct observation at the Museum premises.
- The nature of the research will be qualitative. Oral unstructured interviews will be conducted with the Museum staff, locals employed at the Museum, visitors, and guest houses near the fort to understand the impact of forts operations on the cultural economy of the community.
- Museums partnerships and festivals will be studied in depth to understand the flow of economic resources and the resulting sustainable cultural practices and their effect on the Museum's resources and the local community.
- Data will be collected from Museum’s shops, cafes, and adventure activities to analyse the revenue generation.
- Photo documentation of the facilities in the Museum will be conducted.
Bharat Kala Bhavan Museum at Banaras Hindu University: Rediscovering its existing historiography to learn about its future
by Abhinav Mishra
As an emerging discipline in India needs attention and concrete research to trace the historiography of prominent museums. Museums hold objects from the past, and it is these objects that hold curious stories hidden in them. The subject of museology covers major city museums located in Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta — but, in my opinion, leaves behind the museums in other regions. One such museum is the Bharat Kala Bhavan, situated inside the campus of the Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi. Rai Krishnadas established the Bharat Kala Bhavan in 1920 as a museum dedicated to Indian fine arts, crafts, textiles, archaeology and numismatics. However, the present museum building was established in 1962, when the foundation was laid by our first Prime Minister. Before the erection of the building, Krishnadas met the renowned Indian art scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy and meeting with him clearly left an imprint on the nature of the collection of Rai Krishnadas. The institution’s collection is one of the largest and richest in India, with exquisite paintings, sculptures, coins and other precious artefacts, ranging from Terracotta artefacts belonging to 371 BC to Tagore towards the contemporary setting. It also includes the ‘Chhavi Gallery’, dedicated exclusively to paintings ranging from the 11th Century to the 20th Century AD. It holds almost 12,000 paintings in total, including those preserved in the repository of the museum.
Despite containing one of the richest collections of paintings in the country, the Bharat Kala Bhavan stands isolated and neglected in the hands of the government. Interestingly, apart from a collection of essays published in 1982, there are almost no other written records present to inform art history scholars about this rich treasure of Indian art and culture. An exception would be the paper “Imaginaries of the Art Museum: Banaras and Aundh in Colonial India” by research scholar Deepti Mulgund, who looks at the museum in a comparative study. It is, therefore, with the intent of going and examining the museum that my extended attempt will be to collect and record and research further on the historiographical archives related to Bharat Kala Bhavan since it lacks proper historiographical documentation while also attempting to prepare a catalogue for the paintings — at least of those which are on display. The museum has an exquisite collection of manuscript paintings, such as those from the Kalpasutra, Kalakacharya Katha and so on, as well as Rajasthani paintings, rare Mughal style paintings (including the precious Hamzanama) from the Mughal reign of Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, followed by the later Mughal rulers, Bundi paintings, Pahari Paintings, Basohli and Kangra school of paintings, Shahnama from the 15th century, Company School of paintings, along with the Neo-Bengal school of paintings among many others.
My interest in this area of research comes from the necessity for art scholars to engage with the museum more closely and expand its accessibility to a larger audience through awareness. The Indian art scholarship would benefit immensely from this collection and the diverse ideas and aspects of history that it has to offer. As an aspiring scholar myself, I believe that working on this case study would provide me with the opportunity to produce in-depth research on the history of the museum and its collection, as well as unexplored connections between the two after spending a considerable amount of time with them. I also intend to apply my academic training to understand the collection better and relate it to the position of the museum in larger contexts. A first-hand experience in observing the works and artefacts on display would also allow me to study them closely and explore new meanings in pre-existing facts around them.\
The Bharat Kala Bhavan houses a major part of the artistic and cultural history of India and its dialogue with the histories of other nations and dynasties through art and culture, exhibited using fascinating examples that are relatively unnoticed — a situation that needs to be reversed. Not only does the collection welcome scholars to a variety of resources, but it also presents the possibility of a strong chronological framework of Indian art and culture that could be useful in the study of not only its relevant historical aspects but also their reflection on the present day and the future they behold. The research procedure will involve interviews with the curators, accessing the archive collection primarily stored in the museum itself and in various libraries, which are not accessible online. In addition to that, scanning and researching each painting to be catalogued in detail. The museum charges Rs. 500 for the photography of each artefact or work stored there, which further broadens the gap of accessibility of these museum objects to the public. As part of my postgraduate coursework course, such as “Museums and Representations” taught by Professor Kavita Singh as well as a survey course on Indian Art and Architecture (Proto History to the 18th Century) involving training in cataloguing by Professor Naman Ahuja would allow me to proficiently execute to this idea. As mentioned earlier, the historiography of Bharat Kala Bhavan is limited to a collection of essays published in 1982, and not many scholars have delved into its collection beyond that — thus encouraging me to pursue this in full effect.
Exploring the Intersection of Cultre, Sanitation and Social Change at The Toilet Museum
by Tanya Maheshwari
The generic definition of a museum characterises it as a site for the documentation and displaying of objects of cultural, historical, political and social significance and the dissemination of programmes pertinent to the same. It may the, stand ground to say that a museum is edified by it’s surrounding context and also shapes it and by extension, comes under the large banner of ‘culture’ itself.
The socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic Raymond Williams mentions in his work ‘The Analysis of Culture’ : “We cannot say that we know a particular form or period of society, and that we will see how its art and theory relate to it, for until we know these, we cannot really claim to know the society. This is a problem of method, and is mentioned here because a good deal of history has in fact been written on the assumption that the bases of the society, its political, economic, and ‘social’ arrangements, form the central core of facts, after which the art and theory can be adduced, for marginal illustration or ‘correlation”.
More often that not, fields of study within arts and culture tend to distance themselves from ‘humour’, what is one to do with a ‘discourse’ that puts itself at a distance from laughter. Not an avid museum go-er myself, I decided to conduct a quick google search on the Museums in the city of Delhi, and I came across the Toilet museum, run by Sulabh International, The founder of Sulabh International Social Service Organisation Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak envisioned this one of the unique museums, which has a rare collection of facts, pictures and objects detailing the historic evolution of toilets from 2500 BC to date and provides a chronological account of developments relating to technology, toilet related social customs, toilet etiquettes, prevailing sanitary conditions and legislative efforts of the times.
I see this as a significant institution that can address inequalities in access to sanitation, along lines of gender, caste and class, but the writing and documentation I found online was negligible and more or less relegated to the ‘strangeness’ of the concept, and it’s mention on the TIME magazines 100 list. I would like to visit and document the museum, conduct interviews with the founder and museum workers and place it within the larger context of urban sanitation in India. I would also like to explore how a museum such as this can lend itself to the process of demystification, and a certain universality that can be gained by situating the private within the public.
For queries, please write to anjchita@cultre.in