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:
- 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
- Vagavolu, D. (2021, June 22). [2106.11897] MuseumViz -- Towards Visualizing Online Museum Collections. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2106.11897
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Language and Intermedial Metamorphoses in Indian Literature and Arts. (2021, January 18). De Gruyter eBooks, 551-562. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642056-041
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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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