In Flux: The Making of Indian Museums and their audiences

The first museum in India was established in 1814 following on the heels of museum-making that had swept Europe in the late 18th century. Though located closely in time, the reception, function and development of museums in India could not have been more different than its European counterpart. The survival of museums in India, a western import to the subcontinent, is characterised by remarkable shape shifting- from being important sites for the materialisation of colonial knowledge- gathering and later, the performance of nationhood, to its present day resurrection as places of memorialisation, community engagement, and scientific and cultural learning. The resultant increasingly complex, unique and vibrant museum landscape has not only changed the audience that visits it but has in turn been transformed by the visitors and their presence.

This article will explore the reciprocal relationship between museums and its visitors with reference to India; how the museum through its institutional regulations, forms of addressal and careful narrativizing shapes the visitor and her experience, and how the visitor actively negotiates, appropriates, and re-defines the museum to change its meaning, function and patterns of usage.

Beginning of museums

Museums, as we know them today, were first conceived in Europe when the eclectic curiosities emerging from a private impulse to collect were granted public access. While histories of collecting date back to early human…