Empty, dim, dusty and filled with strange objects – if these are the ideas that come to you instantly as you muse over museums, you are likely to find many in agreement with you. More than the little sparkles of excitement the monuments can cause, museums fail to inspire anyone. Apart from those helpless visits to it as children, none of us feel persuaded to walk into what should have been the place that contains lots of history and glimpses of our glorious past.

“It’s this precise lack of excitement that poses the greatest problem for our museums,” says Dr R Nagaswamy, former director of archaeology at the Madras Museum and an acclaimed archaeologist. “You can’t dismiss all our museums as a bunch of dilapidated buildings with dusty monuments. There are some excellent ones too, such as the state museums in Bhopal, Lucknow and Patna. But the real question here is who are interested in these museums?”

Apart from following some of the outdated methods in displaying and documenting the monuments, Dr Nagaswamy says, the intellectual activity that goes with the museums has considerably declined in the last few years. He fondly remembers the 1960s and 70s, when museums were run by acclaimed curators who enlivened them with their expertise. “Museums are not exhibitions,” the archaeologist clarifies. “They are great subjects for educational and academic studies. We seem to have forgotten this aspect of the museum and have failed to add educational value to them in the last few years.” The curator, for instance, plays an important role in building a museum’s collection.

As he/she is usually an expert in a particular era or branch of study, the curator contributes to the character and appeal of a museum and having a group of them often enhances the quality. Today, though perspectives have changed and the so-called experts are only interested in increasing ticket prices to fatten the coffers, which, according to Dr Nagaswamy, is certain to dwindle public interest in museums.

Also, very little effort goes into acquainting visitors with the objects. Dr Nagaswamy says officials in European museums are helpful to scholars and researchers in accessing artifacts: “For instance, when I tell them that I have come to examine the collection of their coins, they would take me straight to the reserve and allow me to study them. The same can’t be said about our museums. There are frequent complaints even from the scholars that they had been disallowed from studying artifacts.”

Lack of quality publications on museums (especially with illustrations of the artifacts), failure to understand their role in writing historical materials, short of imagination in enhancing their appeal are some of the reasons Dr Nagaswamy lists out for the failure of Indian museums to sparkle among the best in the world.

He contends that the purpose of museums has to be essentially educational. Visits by school children must therefore be encouraged, as it would help youngsters develop a passion for history. Working at museums and spending time understanding history through the objects there has to be part of the teacher training programmes. “We mustn’t forget that a child’s imagination can be triggered by what he/she sees in the museum. So, educational visits are not merely taking them around,” he says. “We need to organise them in smaller groups, assign a teacher or a facilitator to each of the group and allow the educational officer of the museum to personally explain about the artifacts on display.

Also, most of the documents displayed near the objects (in Indian museums) can only be understood by adults and experts and so, children usually don’t get to learn anything from them.”

Apart from some grants and half-hearted efforts to enhance the ambience inside museums, virtually no effort has been taken by the state governments to make museums attractive to the public and the scholars alike. Dr Nagaswamy highlights two important aspects in this regard: amending government regulations to allow private investments and making museums competitive, which have made museums in the West a bustling place. He wonders why the government isn’t allowing private museums, when it remains a popular concept abroad.
“The government must treat museum development and maintenance as part of cultural and educational development,” he opines. “This change in perspective would certainly help the legislatures allocate the sums needed to keep museums visitable and enjoyable.” Though private investors are ready to pour money into museums, he says government rules and regulations don’t allow that.

This has left monuments such as the Amaravadhi sculptures — made during King Ashoka’s times in Andhra Pradesh and one of the few remaining evidences of the Buddhist art tradition in South India — languish in woeful conditions in the Madras museum. He says theme-based museums (such as the native Indian village of Miccasukku near Miami, where an entire village has been made into a museum) and rural museums (based on monuments relevant to the place) can be tried to make museums interesting.