With the International Museum Day being celebrated with great enthusiasm, two exhibitions – Hastantaran and Kshetrajna were inaugurated at New Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art by the Union Minister of Culture, G. Kishan Reddy.
Present on the occasion were Secretary, Ministry of Culture Govind Mohan and Director General of NGMA Gadanayak.
The two exhibitions are seminal and focus on the modern masters of Indian art. Kshetrajna is an exhibition on the nine National Treasures, Ramkinkar Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee while Hastantaran is a retrospective of Gandhian artist Nandalal Bose
Besides this the Ministry of Culture also unveiled two initiatives. These were the announcement of the Mu(See)um hackathon, and the launch of the ‘Museums of India’ mobile app.
Mu(See)um hackathon aims to seek the brightest minds in the country to create unique solutions to museum-centric problem statements while the mobile app’s objective is to do away with the physical and geographical boundaries of museums by granting access to 750 digitised objects from 8 national museums across the country.
Speaking about the app, the Minister said: “This will enable all of us to see and listen to stories, paintings, photography and speeches from the museums across the country.”
Apart from setting up new museums, upgradation of the existing ones is also going on to make them more interesting and attractive to visitors with use of technology. Reddy informed that a MoU has been signed with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for upgrading the museums.
IMD is being celebrated for a week across the country at seven different locations by the Ministry till May 20. These places are New Delhi’s National Museum, National Gallery of Modern Art at New Delhi and Bengaluru, Allahabad Museum, Prayagraj, Kolkata’s Indian Museum and Victoria Memorial Hall, Hyderabad’s Salar Jung Museum and National Council of Science Museums at 24 places in India.
Besides free admission to museums, the celebrations include a webinar, special exhibitions, projection mapping shows, extended museum hours, music and dance performances including flash mob.
