National Museum New Delhi

Interior view with a collection of Hindu statues

The National Museum New Delhi ( English National Museum, New Delhi ) is an Indian museum in the capital New Delhi at the junction of Janpath / Maulana Azad Road . Even before the museums in Kolkata and Chennai , it is the largest and most important in the country.

history

The beginnings of the National Museum go back to a London exhibition of the British Royal Academy of Arts in the winter of 1947/1948 on Indian art . After the exhibition, the curators decided to show the same exhibition entirely in India. This took place in 1949 in the Rashtrapati Bhavan and should be continued as a permanent exhibition due to its success. The New Delhi National Museum was proclaimed on August 15, 1949 in the presence of C. Rajagopalachari . A cornerstone of the new museum building was set by the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on May 12, 1955. The museum was opened on December 18, 1960. It is administered by the Indian Ministry of Culture. The National Museum Institute of History of Arts, Conservation and Museology has been located in the museum since 1983 , which has had the status of Deemed University since 1989 and thus access to state funding.

Collections

The museum houses a large number of exhibits from prehistoric times, through the Indus culture , Gandhara art, the Gupta period and the Indian Middle Ages to modern works of the 21st century. Most of the exhibits belong to Hindu, Buddhist and Jain arts. But artistic legacies from the tribal regions of India and the Islamic period are also shown. Over 200,000 individual pieces of both Indian and international origin are stored or shown in the museum.

gallery

Children's toys from Mohenjodaro
Head of a Buddha statue in the New Delhi National Museum.
Buddhist stupa with relics of Buddha, from a stupa created by Ashoka in the 3rd century BC. Chr.
Buddha in the art of Gandhara
Shiva dancing ( Nataraja ), Chola , 12th century AD, bronze
Wooden Garuda statue.
A dancing balakrishna