This book is the first-ever compilation of essays by cultural practitioners about the changing and unchanging dynamics of India's museum landscape. The essays highlight Indian cultural institutions' ambitious beginnings, missed opportunities along the way, and the canvas for future imaginings. At a time when museums in India are undergoing a sea change, this publication provides an invaluable insight into museum design, curatorial narratives, documentation and cataloguing and visitors' experience that will soon redefine museum perspectives in India. The book is a welcome resource for all museum planners, curators, conservators and researchers in the field.
The museum of the East India Company formed, for a large part of the nineteenth century, one of the sights of London. In recent years, little has been remembered of it beyond its mere existence, while an assumed negative role has been widely attributed to it on the basis of its position at the heart of one of Britain’s arch-colonialist enterprises. Extensively illustrated, The India Museum Revisited provides a full examination of the museum’s founding manifesto and evolving ambitions. It surveys the contents of its multi-faceted collections – with respect to materials, their manufacture and original functions on the Indian sub-continent – as well as the collectors who gathered them and the manner in which they were mobilized to various ends within the museum. From this integrated treatment of documentary and material sources, a more accurate, rounded and nuanced picture emerges of an institution that contributed in major ways, over a period of 80 years, to the representation of India for a European audience, not only in Britain but through the museum’s involvement in the international exposition movement to audiences on the continent and beyond.
Fostering Empathy through Museums features fifteen case studies with clear take-away ideas, and lessons learned by vividly illustrating a spectrum of approaches in the way museums are currently employing empathy, a critical skill that is relevant to personal, institutional, economical, and societal progress. The need is rapidly growing for empathy to serve as a lens through which we find our purpose and connection in a complex world. This demand brings with it an appetite to cultivate it through safe and trusted platforms. Museums are uniquely equipped to undertake this important mission. This book will help museum staff and leadership at all levels working at a variety of museums (from animal sanctuaries to art museums, from historic house museums to children's and science museums) to better understand the multitude of ways how empathy can be cultivated, and employed in museum setting. Fostering Empathy through Museums will provide inspiration, examples, and lessons learned from a balanced spectrum of museums currently employing empathy in museum setting: as an educational tool to better connect their content with the audience, as an integral element of a museum's institutional values and behavior, and as a phenomenon that is worthy of exploration on its own and as an intentional outcome. This publication provides museum professionals as well as formal and informal learning educators to receive an overview of the variety of approaches to empathy in museums, and to create a shared language and methodologies that could enable them to utilize and nurture empathy as a "shared vision" that would serve not only their organizational mission, but also the greater good. Empathy can be a tool, or an intentional outcome depending on the institution’s objectives. Regardless of the choice, the ideas presented in this book are intended to inform and inspire institutions to unlock exciting possibilities in the areas of improved visitor experience, creative community partnerships, and contribution to social progress by bringing empathy to public discourse through institutional strategies, exhibitions, experiences, and programs. The book also provides ideas for future strategies where empathy is considered as a "shared vision" by museums, and a product of a museum experience that might lead to positive social impact.
This volume brings together a range of essays that offer a new perspective on the dynamic history of the museum as a cultural institution in South Asia. It traces the museum from its origin as a tool of colonialism and adoption as a vehicle of sovereignty in the nationalist period, till its role in the present, as it reflects the fissured identities of the post-colonial period.
Almost Sixty Years Ago, Nehru Spoke Of India S Tryst With Destiny At The Dawn Of Independence. In The Constitution Of The New Republic That Was Framed A Few Years Later, The Goals And Values Of That Vision Were Unfolded. How Far Have We Progressed Since Then And What Is It That Destiny Now Holds For Tomorrow S India? The Present Volume Of Essays Surveys The Scene Past-Forward And Paints A Picture Of What Has Been Accomplished And What Remains To Be Done. There Is Pride And Satisfaction In Particular Over India S Vibrant Democracy And Progress In Many Directions. This Is Nonetheless Tinged With Concern, For There Are Nagging Problems Of Governance And Shortfalls In Human And Infrastructure Development, As Well As Social Deficits In The Matter Of Rights, Corruption And Sectoral And Regional Imbalances. All These Must Be Squarely Faced And Speedily Overcome If The Nation Is To Grow In Keeping With Its Increasingly Recognized Potential As A Rising Great Power. It Has Been Widely Forecast That Within Thirty Years India, Together With The United States And China, Will Constitute The Three Largest Economies In The World. The Wellsprings Of Growth Are There. However, As More Than One Author Points Out, Mere Economic And Technological Growth Is Not Enough. In This Globalizing World The Market Is Not All. The Citizen Must March Hand In Hand With The Consumer In A Sharing And Caring Society. The Twenty-Four Essayists Who Write Of Tomorrow S India Do So In Celebration Of The 125Th Anniversary Of Their Alma Mater, Delhi S St Stephen S College. Their Themes Relate To Diplomacy And Security; The Economy And Technology; Governance; Society S Watchdogs; Ideology And Values; Social Change; And Culture And Heritage. The Authors Represent A Galaxy Of Public Figures, Academics, Professionals And Social Workers. What They Have To Say Makes Compelling Reading, With Penetrating Insights And Critiques. Contributors Include George Abraham, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Rukmini Banerji, Ranjit Bhatia, Ravi Dayal, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Sagarika Ghose, Navina Haidar Haykel, Prem Shankar Jha, Manoj Joshi, Mukul Kesavan, Arun Kumar, Sarwar Lateef, Arun Maira, Harsh Mander, Deepak Nayyar, Bunker Roy, Vikramjit Sen, Kapil Sibal, Dilip Simeon, K. Natwar Singh, N.K. Singh, B.G. Verghese And Sitaram Yechury
A Hindu-Jewish Conversation: Root Traditions in Dialogue is a historical, theological, and phenomenological engagement of the Hindu and Jewish traditions, two “root” traditions that give rise to other—in some ways very different—types of religious traditions. Rachel Fell McDermott and Daniel F. Polish explore conceptions of the divine, which are frequently cited as the most serious obstacle to a serious theological engagement between the two traditions; differences in attitude towards heroes, saints, and holy people; the religious resources and challenges experienced by Hindu and Jewish women; what can be learned about Hindu and Jewish spiritual outpouring by comparing Hindu devotional poetry and the Book of Psalms; the ways in which the two traditions address the fraught question of theodicy, or why bad things happen to good people; the status of “the land” and nationalist claims on it; and the uncomfortable question of caste and its possible social parallels in the Jewish tradition. The authors weave considerations of these topics into an ongoing conversation that offers students of both traditions new ways of thinking both about their intersections and about the history of religion in general. A coda explores these same issues by recounting an actual series of discussions convened between Hindu and Jewish practitioners.
Representing the Nation gathers key writings from leading cultural thinkers to ask what role cultural institutions play in creating and shaping our sense of ourselves as a nation.
"The book is divided into four sections. The first features the idea of a museum and the knowledge that it produces. The second explores the notion of tradition. The third looks at the position of the individual within community art, and the final one traces the relationship of lived histories to indigenous art, with a tribute to the enduring power of the imagination."--Page 14.
