What questions the success and status of Museums in India?

To understand why museums in India are not as successful as those in the UK, America, and other developed countries, it is essential to consider various factors such as museum practices, public engagement, digital visualization, cultural heritage preservation, and museum management. The success of museums is influenced by factors such as community engagement, decolonization, visual appeal, comprehension, language skills, historical tourism, scholarly standards, digital preservation, and cultural heritage management. Additionally, the success of museums is dependent on the training of information professionals, the use of digital platforms, and the development of open-source technical frameworks for managing indigenous cultural heritage resources. Furthermore, the success of museums is linked to the implementation of institutional theories, the collection and publication of biodiversity information, and the use of crowdsourcing for better governance.

In Indian context and in personal opinion following are the main reasons of underdeveloped museum environment

1.      Absence of centralized logical policy, that further needs to be based on fundamental requirements of indigenous heritage management

2.      Scarcity of Expertise based, Resourceful & Competent administrative framework.

3.      Adequate fund allocation, smooth usage of allocated fund, bunch of technical difficulties related to usage of allocated fund

4.      Absence of systems for frequent quality and up gradation assessment for Exhibits, Infrastructure, HR and other functionalities.

5.      Museums perceived as low priority institutions even below schools.

6.      Less efficient and foreign centric Heritage Education/Academic system, absence of any incubation systems of under training professionals.

Other than fundamental challenges, nature of museums in India itself is challenging the sustainability and questioning the survival of traditional benchmarks. Few references on the subject can be invited from the places across. Various academicians have deep observations regarding status of museums in India. Few noteworthy mentions are here as following-

●       In India, the success of museums is influenced by the nascent discipline of public history, community engagement, and decolonization efforts (Lyngwa, 2022).

●       Challenges exist in the visual representation of online museum collections, as many Indian online museums display artefacts in a less visually appealing manner, making it difficult for visitors to comprehend the content (Vagavolu, 2021).

●       Language skills also play a crucial role in the success of museums, as workers involved in showcasing museums in India largely use the English language primarily to communicate with visitors from varied language-speaking states within India and abroad (Karunakar, 2019).

●       Moreover, the preservation of history, the quality, and management of museums are of utmost importance for successful historical tourism (Thomas, 2010) which India struggles at many places.

●       Museums increasingly face the challenge of maintaining scholarly and professional standards while also being compelling and entertaining enough to compete with their audience's other numerous leisure time options (Sandaruwani & Gnanapala, 2021).

 

There are rare efforts made to keep up the quality with logic and arguments. Furthermore, the appreciation of folk artisans and crafts in Indian society has been evolving due to foreign interest, which has propelled them further towards acclaim abroad in museums, private collections, and art festivals (Language and Intermedial Metamorphoses in Indian Literature and Arts, 2021). The success of museums also depends on the work of information professionals specifically trained to deal with the problems of museum informatics and the museum's information needs (Marty, 2006). Additionally, the challenges faced by museums include dealing with global digital audiences and cognitive modelling of online content (Belova & AUTHOR_ID, 2021).  The success of museums is also linked to the development of open-source technical frameworks for managing indigenous cultural heritage resources (Dutta & Mukhopadhyay, 2022). Application of institutional theories to managing megaprojects and the collection and publication of biodiversity information are essential for the success of museums (Kakizoe et al., 2023) and in my opinion they are largely not practiced in India.

Snippet Day 4

#heritage #culture #museum #india #culturalheritage #management #education #traditionalknowledge 

References:

  1. Lyngwa, A. (2022, February 20). Self‐Representation, Community Engagement and Decolonisation in the Museums of Indigenous Communities: Perspectives from Meghalaya, India. History, 107(375), 302-321. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-229x.13268
  2. Vagavolu, D. (2021, June 22). [2106.11897] MuseumViz -- Towards Visualizing Online Museum Collections. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2106.11897
  3. Karunakar, M T. (2019, December 6). TEACHING OCCUPATIONAL SPEAKING SKILLS TO WORKERS OF A HERITAGE MUSEUM. Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes, 375-375. https://doi.org/10.22190/jtesap1903375k
  4. Thomas, J. (2010, January 1). Heritage Walks as a Tool for Promoting Sustainable Historical Tourism. Atna journal of tourism studies, 5(1), 40-51. https://doi.org/10.12727/ajts.5.4
  5. Sandaruwani, J., & Gnanapala, A. (2021, October 1). Challenges and Issues Confronting Sri Lanka in Museum Tourism Development. Curator: The Museum Journal, 64(4), 751-778. https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.12445
  6. Language and Intermedial Metamorphoses in Indian Literature and Arts. (2021, January 18). De Gruyter eBooks, 551-562. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642056-041
  7. Marty, P F. (2006, November 9). The changing nature of information work in museums. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 58(1), 97-107. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20443
  8. Belova, A., & AUTHOR_ID, N. (2021, January 1). DIGITAL MULTIMODALITY OF MUSEUMS DISCOURSE DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC. Studia Linguistica, 9-23. https://doi.org/10.17721/studling2021.18.9-23
  9. Dutta, A., & Mukhopadhyay, P. (2022, April 15). Indigenous Cultural-Heritage Resource Management System: Designing an Open-Source Based Technical Framework. SRELS Journal of Information Management, 65-77. https://doi.org/10.17821/srels/2022/v59i2/168787
  10. Kakizoe, S., Ota, A T., Hosoya, T., & Jinbo, U. (2023, August 31). Japan Biodiversity Information Initiative (JBIF)'s Efforts to Collect and Publish Biodiversity Information from Japan. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, 7. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.7.111893


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