‘Museums across the world are redefining themselves in Covid-19 times’

The Covid-19 pandemic – for the second year running - has deeply affected the world and the buzzword is redefine yourself. In such a scenario, museums are redefining themselves – and India, which has several world-class museums, is not an exception.

DH’s Mrityunjay Bose spoke to Shivaprasad M Khened, Director of Nehru Science Centre, Mumbai, on the challenges that the museums face. Hailing from Karnataka, Khened is former Director, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and Bengaluru and former Director, Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum, Bengaluru. “Museums are redefining because of the challenges thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic and the emerging technologies…in real sense people are now custodians of museums and not just the curators,” says Khened.

Excerpts:

The year 2020 was full of challenges because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Even when it appeared that things were going our way, comes a major challenge in the form of a second wave and there may be subsequent waves. How do you see museums ahead?

There are museums of various types across the globe. Most of them are facing challenges in terms of revenue and footfall due to the raging pandemic. Several of them have been closed, as reflected in the survey of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), the apex international body for museums. Definitely, that is a worrying sign but it is because of conditions beyond the control of governments or museum administrations. But most of the museums across the world have taken museums to the drawing rooms or study rooms. Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence are making it possible. We can have a 3D view of an object on laptops or TV sets. Over the last one year, most museums have tried to innovate and create several online digital content and programmes, which have been aired to the homes during the lockdown.

Q. Can we have some examples?

A. Let’s take our case as an example. We made arrangements to show live the Annular Solar Eclipse of June 21, 2020. We streamed it on our social media platforms. Can you guess how many people viewed it? It is unimaginable! Around seven lakh people saw it. Bottom lines have been affected but then this has been the case across different sectors, let’s take it as a challenge and prepare for the future. Museums have enhanced their digital activities and digital presence and are continuing to upgrade across platforms and this is perhaps the right answer.

Q. Has there been an interaction across museums of the world?

A. Yes, the lockdown did help us enhance co-operation. We could host several events with top scientists across the world, we had online talks, events, lecture series. Recently, we collaborated with the Russian Centre for Science and Culture to commemorate online the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight to space. We had more than 500 people who were online to witness the event. We had three cosmonauts from Russia, and from India we had Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, the first astronaut of India, sharing his experience. We also had T K Alex from Isro who spoke about the Indo Russian Space collaboration. Last year, former Isro chairman A S Kiran Kumar told us how India must harness the potential of the $400 billion global space economy. Veteran archaeologist Vasant Shinde spoke about Rakhigarhi excavation. Veteran nuclear scientist Anil Kakodkar spoke on India’s nuclear power programme. Nasscom president Debjani Ghosh and former TCS chairman S Ramadorai were other dignitaries who spoke to our audience from our platform.

Q. How are you ensuring that people keep on coming?

A. We have increased the outreach. From websites to social media platforms, details of events are being shared in advance, registrations are done in advance. There are reminders and mailers. And after the event, we are in touch with them. Many of them are returning for new events and online workshops. It is emerging as a platform for discussions and exchange of ideas.

Q. Can you share some pluses that the year has given?

Fortunately, the Covid-19 challenge, which has compelled all museums including our science museum, to be closed for visitors, has given us an opportunity to take up restoration of our precious locomotive collections during this lockdown period. You have to think out-of-the-box and keep innovating, and adapt to new challenges the Darwinian way perhaps.

Q. How is India facing the challenges?

A. We also have such examples in India of developing new types of digital museums/exhibitions - Virtual Experiential Museums (VEM) that perhaps will be very useful in the current context. Incidentally, the National Council of Science Museums, Kolkata has been involved in developing two of these exhibitions for the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. The first VEM has come up in Varanasi; it provides an immersive experience of the vibrancy of the socio-cultural, religious, artistic and historic significance of the city of Varanasi. Similarly, there is another VEM that has been created at the National Museum which has been curated, designed and developed by IIT-Bombay. It provides an amazing immersive experience for the visitors and the digital content and technologies developed for these two VEMs in India are so very relevant in the current context for connecting museums virtually to our visitors.

Once Covid-19 pandemic is over, museums would be crowded for sure and footfalls, we hope, would double or triple because of the interest that we could generate and also because of the fatigue that people have faced staying home. They would love to go out for sure and what better place for an outing than a visit to the museums.