When Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) opened in Saket back in 2011 with an aim to educate and inculcate museum culture in the country, it was expected that the capital would see more private museums setting up on different subjects. However, the segment witnessed a lull period and KNMA was considered to be one-of-its-kinds. Not anymore! In the last two years, the capital and its surrounding cities saw many interesting private museums like Heritage Transportation Museum in Gurgaon and Shree Sanjay Sharma Museum in Jaipur gaining popularity with their unique concepts and audience engagement. Going forward, art lovers are up for many more private museums. By the end of this year, Gurgaon will have a 15,000 sq ft Vintage Camera Museum, Amritsar will house the Partition Museum and Jaipur will have Museum of History of Rajasthan.
Interactive display helps in raising interest for museums shares Tarun Thakral, founder and managing trustee of the Gurgaon-based Heritage Transportation Museum which on weekends sees a footfall of over 400 visitors. “Delhi houses some of the best national museums in the country, yet finds it difficult to get footfalls. To inculcate that, we need to have more interactive displays. Sadly, most of the museums do not have proper descriptions, resulting in artworks of great historic importance being ignored and unseen,” adds Tarun.
There is no attempt to interest the untutored eye, shares Aditya Arya, curator of Museo Camera, the only vintage camera museum in the country. “Most of the attendants at our government-run museums have no knowledge whatsoever about the artifacts. One must also understand that bureaucrats with no experience or interest in art are mostly head of public museums. What drives a private museum’s success is the passion and vision with which it is run,” says Arya.
According to Kiran Nadar, founder, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, “The idea is to be a public institution that can educate the laymen. Private museums have outreach programmes designed to build relationship with the audience. We have seen schools making repeated visits, and the talks and workshops are popular.”
Private museums document, exhibit, educate and disseminate information about a niche segment in an interactive manner, feels Tarun. “It’s a very individual experience. There is definitely something for everybody — the key is to connect with the audience,” he adds.
Kishwar Desai, chair and trustee of the forthcoming Partition Museum in Amritsar, agrees, “Partition as a subject evokes very strong emotions and the audience instantly connects with the subject because they might have heard their family member or friends narrating stories. We started it with the aim of a documentation project but later realised that there is need for a physical space that will be a memorial to the personal and human tragedies of this event, a commemoration of the resilience of people that migrated, a reminder of the need for continuous dialogue.”
Display, structure and presentation is key for engagement, points out architect, interiors and product designer Shantanu Garg, who is currently working on the blueprint of the upcoming museum of History of Rajasthan in Jaipur. “We want to keep the tradition and culture intact but the building structure will have a modern take to it. The idea behind the thought is simple; the outer structure should stir up enough curiosity amongst the citizens to come and see the place from inside. We are ensuring that the visitor engagement is the priority from inception to execution.”
Talking about the financial aspect of running a museum of such a scale, Tarun states, “It is very difficult to maintain and sustain a museum. The smartest way to run a museum successfully would be by utilising each and every space and renting it.”
Corporate tie-ups help in boasting revenues, shares Tarun, “For example, in our museum we have an air-conditioned conference room that can accommodate around 300 that are rented to the MNCs for team building exercises. We also have atrium spaces that can host parties or smaller events. Additionally, we have acres of manicured lawns where we typically organise corporate family day events and corporate functions. We have activities aimed at school children and a lot of school groups come in during the week.”
Location, space and artifacts play a vital role for the successful continuity of a museum shares Kiran, who is also planning to come up with a standalone museum in the near future. “We set our museum in a mall complex with an idea that we can attract the mall goers, and the walk-ins will be more. Unfortunately, it has not worked in our favour. But, what worked is that we do not focus on a niche segment. So, we have wider aspect of works to be shown to the public. When you have a museum based on a niche subject, you would only show a certain number to the viewer and there will come a point when he would have seen everything, so revisits become out of question,” she concludes.
