What is the Indian museum today?

What is a museum, really? A building that reflects objects in homes? Temple of knowledge? A vault of the past? Or a theater of the present? North is complicated as the basic contradiction of the institution. Museums claim to preserve and preserve, but they also cure and construction. The question of publicity is important. For most Indians, a trip to the museum is still a rare phenomenon – more school trip than the weekend ceremony.

The power of a museum is not only in its artifacts, but in its audience. We should ask: What kind of history do we want? Who is to tell? Can we demand more nuances, more truths as citizens in democracy? Can museums become educational spaces, where history is not consumed, rather it is questioned. Where young people do not learn what happened, but why it matters, and who matters.

Performance politics

India is undergoing a museum-building renaissance. Across the country, state and private actor are investing in ambitious cultural institutions – from redevelopment of the National Museum in New Delhi to regional centers of memory and art. Nevertheless, smooth architecture and nation-branding are an important question below optimism: what is being made, by whom, and for whom? What is being remembered, and what is being erased?

According to the Ministry of Culture, more than 100 new experienced museums are in the pipeline, although the details about their subjects, deadlines and places are largely specified. The National Museum is to be transferred as a part of the Central Vista redevelopment project, but there is no public clarity on the fate of its artworks yet – one of the country’s largest and most important collections.

Museums have always shaped public memory. As the state rapidly controls control over the historic story, they risk persuasion, not a place of learning. Then, the challenge is not only to fill the galleries with new stories, but to resume the very consideration of the institution.

From colonial cabinets to national canon

India’s early museums were created by colonial powers as classification and control tools. He displayed Vijay as a culture, and placed Indian crafts and labor within a structure that provided it to primitive, ornamental or dynastic.

Dr. of Mumbai Tasnim Zakaria Mehta, director of Bhau Daji Lad Museum (BDL), reminded us that these institutes were never neutral. In her essay, in ‘The Museum Dicolonizing’, she writes that colonial museums served to “present the colonial as beneficiaries, whose organizations and the systems of the codification represented a better model for development”. BDL was the only one filled with Victoria and Albert Museum, Mumbai, Clay statues, dyramas and decorative items, which was aimed at demonstrating India’s “traditional” manual skills – useful for colonial trade, but stripped of intellectual or artistic legitimacy.

Tasnim Zakaria Meht

Since its restoration and reopening in 2008, BDL has demanded to reverse the story. Mehta’s curatorial vision actively moved the Indian artist and craftsman, re -interpreted the colonial collections of the museum through contemporary cultural exercises. Contemporary artists of The Museum such as Reena Saini Kallat, whose 2025 retrospective Cartography of unseen The subjects addressed by injustice and human Habris reflect BDL’s commitment to dicolonial and inclusive story telling.

Beyond protection

But how do we build new museums – ideologically, not only architecturally – which respond to today’s social and political complications? In the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), Bangalore, the question is at the center of curatorial practice. “We are in a moment where we need to identify that the museum is not only spaces to preserve the heritage, but also the spaces that help us understand the present through the lens of the past,” says Arnika Ahladag, director of exhibitions and cures. “On the map, we see it as a responsibility – to challenge the major narratives and increase the voices that are historically marginalized.” In 2023, the map presented Visible/invisibleAn exhibition that severely examined the depiction of women in art, exposed both visibility and elimination in historical narratives.

Arnika Ahldag

Shailesh Kulal, Inclusion Manager, Leader Visible/invisible Guided walk

“This is about shifting from the museum as a museum gatekeeper as a collaborative place for dialogue,” she says. “We often show objects [like kanthas] That people can be in their homes. That kind of familiarity invites participation, not inactivity. Despite such an initiative, other marginalized approaches need to be detected, such as from Dalit and tribal communities, to ensure a more inclusive curatorial approach.

Who gets to cure culture?

This question of relevance is inseparable from power, and participation is not only about performance – it is about the voice. Who cures? Who gives money? India’s Art Fair, an independent curator, art teacher and former advisor Shaleen slaughter, says it clearly: “India is very socially stratified, so I am hesitant to use words like ‘really public, inclusive and accessible’, as it is incredibly difficult. I am an incredibly difficult. Ideally, ideologically, it is also revealed that the fans should fly.”

Shalene Wadwana

His criticism makes deep cuts. Many new museums can be blind dazzling – such as upcoming Yuz Yuzen Bharat National Museum – but their internal cultures are often opaque, how curatorial direction, institutional staffing, or stories are being shaped. Publicity is not only about ticket prices or weekend programming. This is about who is allowed to participate in fiction at every level.

Listen, not a lecture

Both maps and BDL symbolize a change to hear from presenting knowledge; Treating audiences as cultural co-writers. “In the past, the museums told the audience what they felt that they need to know,” is called Kamini Sohani, the former director of the map. Programming said in English on a large scale, formal, formal and broadly. The ambiguity also echoed in the accent of the label, also: action, and hard-to-read small fonts. For many visitors, the experience was isolated – not only the language, but because some people knew how to see the object of the museum. What do you ask for a 200 year old cloth? Without interpretation, which is accessible, multilingual and reference-rich, the audience is quietly left to appreciate or quietly withdraw.

Kamini Sohani | Photo Credit: Prabhna Shetty

And without meaningful relations with the public, the risk of museums becomes irrelevant. “Public institutions need to reflect on issues that matter to the community. Otherwise, you talk to yourself,” Sawni says. This means that the creation of faith, and faith is a slow task. It is created through transparency (about funding, process and story decisions), multilingual materials, responsible education programs and desire to sit with discomfort.

There are over 1,000 museums in India-most of them are public, and many are still working within the rigid, object-led structure. But some they are doing again that they can be. The year old museum in Mumbai has placed children in the center as co-producers-the design performance that encourages sports, sympathy and problems.

archive

In Amritsar, the Partition Museum had a memory and oral history to narrate a painful past with sympathy and nuances in the foreground. And while there is not a museum in the traditional sense, Kochi-Muziris Bienle has changed how Indians face contemporary art-it embedded in urban space, community life and important discourse. These are rare efforts. But taken together, they present a glimpse of what can look like responsible, plurals and public-supporting museums.

Partition Museum | Photo Credit: Shiv Kumar Pushpkar

A place for plurality

No museum is neutral. Every exhibition is a series of options: what to show, what to do, and how to frame it. Ahldag is clear about this curatorial labor. “We want more people to understand how much is about museum-building negotiations and care,” she says. “It is never neutral. Each decision involves navigating its positions of history, morality and power.”

This is especially essential in India today, where state-cultures lectures have touched the rapid complexity in the celebration. In such a context, just holding the location for a plurality becomes a radical function. “Curating is not just selection; it is a ongoing conversation with artists, colleagues and audiences,” she says. “We have to be open to the response, even when it challenges us.”

Reena Kallat Cartography of unseen On BDL | photo Credit:

Looking for future

So what should be the Indian museum? It should be more than a building, it should be a method of learning, analing, co -existence with discomfort. This should be a place of friction, where the past and current wrestling in the full view of the public. As Wadwana says: “No matter what the center is doing, independent curators and cultural producers will always have the responsibility of making a place for artistic ideas, debate, criticism – and yes, disgrace.” This responsibility is only heavy when the state wants to level the historical story in the consensus of the celebration.

A visitor is interacting with touch performance on the map Ticket vaccine arc

The Indian museum is no answer today, it is a proposal. A site of probability, dispute, education and repair. “Ultimately, the museum should be a place of possibility, not full statements,” slaughter. “The moment we end it, as decided, we have failed its public work.”

The public is also here to play a role. We should demand transparency, challenge silence, and see ourselves not as visitors, but as participants. We have rights – and responsibility – to ask this: Whose history is this? And what are we being asked to forget? The museum should help us remember. What was not only, but still what could happen.

Essayists and teachers write on design and culture.