Calcutta:
Free entry from 10am to 7pm, selfies with exhibits, mementoes inspired by artefacts and more kept Gurusaday Museum abuzz with activity on Thursday, the private collector’s 136th birth anniversary.
The museum in Joka, a treasure trove of kanthawork, patachitra, dokra and other artefacts, fell on hard times after the central government stopped funding it in December last year.
A sustained social media campaign by two research scholars, an archaeologist and an anthropologist has given the museum a fresh lease of life. The campaign to Save Bengal’s Folk History is aimed at reviving the cash-strapped museum and attracting more visitors.
The efforts bore fruit as hundreds of visitors, including schoolchildren, dropped in at the museum on Thursday.
Banners with the slogan Love the Museum welcomed all visitors. Food stalls, cultural programmes and merchandise on sale kept the visitors happy. They were also invited to take selfies with any exhibit of their choice.
“We are just trying to jazz up the birth anniversary celebrations and make the museum more attractive. People should be aware of the rich treasure it houses,” said Malavika Banerjee, the director of Kolkata Literary Meet and Byloom and one of the players in the museum’s revival.
Banerjee first visited the museum 15 years ago and was taken aback by all the folk art lying in oblivion. Some of the artefacts at the museum date back to the 10th century.
Research scholars Shrutakriti Dutta and Sujaan Mukherjee, archaeologist Tathagata Neogi and anthropologist Chelsea McGill, along with Banerjee, ran an online campaign and uploaded a campaign video on YouTube to spread the word.
“We want to start a crowdfunding effort to save the museum and help it sustain itself. We want to work in tandem with the staff and authorities here,” Dutta said.
The museum’s 13-member staff have not received their salaries for over seven months, said the museum’s executive secretary and curator, Bijan Mondal. “Today we have seen many firsts, including the selfie fest. A celebration of this scale till 7pm would have been unthinkable before,” he said.
The celebrations culminated in a discussion on The Life of Our Heritage that had panellists – Jayanta Sengupta, the secretary-curator of Victoria Memorial Hall; Bappaditya Biswas, the creative partner of Byloom; and Snehangshu Sekhar Das, designer at the Regional Design and Technical Development Centre, office of the development commissioner (handicrafts), ministry of textiles – offering suggestions on how to make the museum attractive.
Sengupta spoke about how a museum must be more than just a silent custodian of the past. “It has to reach out to people through smart storytelling,” he said. His advice: Organise workshops, reach out through the social media, engage the audience through proactive and interactive smart thinking, improve display and hook kids with the help of audio-visual clips.
The Victoria Memorial curator offered to hold an exhibition of items from Gurusaday Museum on the Victoria grounds. “We can help restore some collectibles,” he said.
Devsaday Dutt, grandson of Gurusaday Dutt, welcomed the idea. “The museum should be of a seat of knowledge. There are 275 paintings of Abanindranath Tagore and several Jamini Roys here. The storytelling in kantha artworks here will entice anybody,” he said.
source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Chandreyee Ghose / May 11th, 2018