File photo of tourists at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum on International Museum Day.
Credit: PTI Photo
Mumbai: In a new model of co-curation and cooperation on the occasion of 75 years of India’s independence, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum (CSMVS Museum) of Mumbai is showcasing some of the finest artworks and objects from museums around the world.
The initiative ‘Ancient Sculptures: India Egypt Assyria Greece Rome’ - sees the involvement of CSMVS Museum with its special international partners – the Getty, The British Museum, the Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin, as well as leading Indian museums such as National Museum, New Delhi, Bihar Museum, Patna and Directorate of Archaeology and Museums, Madhya Pradesh.
During December 2023- October 2024, the initiative is presenting exhibitions by Indian curators to take their place in Indian narratives of antiquity, joining and complementing cultural histories from ancient Greece and Rome.
“We see the exhibition as a unique and important educational endeavour providing our Indian audiences and children (in particular the high percentage of India’s young people who might never have the opportunity to travel and experience the art and culture of other parts of the world), with new ways of viewing their own culture as a result of seeing it in relation to other societies and geographies,” said Sabyasachi Mukherjee, Director General, CSMVS Museum.
“More than 65% of India’s vast population is under the age of 25. For decades, school children and university students in India have learned about ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, but until now they have not been able to study at first hand any of the great works of art that these civilisations produced. We see the exhibition as a unique and important educational endeavour that provides our Indian audiences and children with new ways of viewing their own culture as a result of seeing it in relation to other societies and geographies,” he added.
The impact of the project will be increased and strengthened through school and university programmes across the country that will enable teachers and professors to introduce teaching with original art objects. The initiative will also enable micro-exhibitions onboard CSMVS’s mobile travelling buses, the Citi-CSMVS Museum on Wheels, that will ensure the project’s learning seeps deep into the cultural fabric of rural India.
Discussions with a group of universities from across the sub-continent has led to an ambitious undertaking, which will be developed in association with Cambridge University’s Global Humanities Programme. Because of the exceptional length of loan for both phases, it will be possible for universities to devise a bespoke curriculum, specifically designed to take advantage of the presence of the visiting objects. For more distant universities, preliminary teaching may be done on campus remotely, to be followed by visits to Mumbai and the Museum. Lectures and seminars will be given by both Indian and international scholars: among these there will be, crucially, specialists from the source countries — thus offering a range of perspectives which should lead to many new insights.