Happy 100th Birthday dearest CSMVS. Our association with you runs deep – both personally and professionally. Giving below just some of our connections, through exhibition reviews, lectures, blogs, guided tours and recent long discussions with the gifted conservation architect who prepared you for your special 100th birthday – Vikas Dilawari 🙂
The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya or the former Prince of Wales Museum is located in Mumbai. It was built by the British to impress their rulers who were visiting India.
In the last few decades, it has shed all its colonial and post colonial baggage and has become a museum of love, respect and warmth, serving its local, national and international audience in the best possible ways. A true museum as a museum should represent.
It has hosted some fantastic international exhibitions like ‘The India & the World’, ones on Rembrandt and Mughal miniature paintings, Cyrus cylinder, Company Paintings, on Mummy and the one on miniature objects stand out!
This is where I started my first #projectinterpret museum walk with @manjuramanan and followed it up with large group from NGOs and with colleagues. I’ve also reviewed their exhibitions a few times 😊
This photograph is with its extremely hard working, sincere, upright honest and dignified Director General Dr Sabyasachi Mukherjee and my parents. They share a strong personal and professional bond. My father has been associated with the CSMVS since it’s oldest director’s time from 1950s. The ones with terracotta panels are from their Children’s Museum, original artworks handmade by Indian crafts communities and curated by children!!!!!
The photos below are from lectures by my father, Dr Asok Kumar Das, on invitation by the Museum Society of Mumbai and CSMVS at the Museum. He is flanked by Dr Saryu Doshi, Dr Devangana Desai and Dr Pheroza Godrej and my mother Dr Syamali Das. Here’s a link to his online talk for them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SAHcz8fABc&t=2s
CSMVS is home and happiness not only for me but for many in the world ♥️♥️♥️ Congratulations Dr Mukherjee and your team… we’re all with you 🙏🏽
We are sharing below the museum memories sent to us by Apeksha Parmar and Deeptanshu Sanyal of the CSMVS for ‘The Museum Memories Project’ – an oral history documentation project started by VarnikaDesigns in April 2020:
Last year I visited CSMVS museum as a part of my project with my classmates.The museum is made in a huge ancient building situated in Mumbai. First thing I found amazing was the historical interior which has beautiful intricate designs and was the highlight of our visit. Observing each and every unique artefacts blew my mind and it was great experience to know more about the artefacts that I found very fascinating. There’s a story behind each and every artefacts which made everything more interesting. Tour guide took us from everything that was there by telling us the stories behind the artefacts.
Museums inspires us through their history of the arts and artefacts and enhance our learning experience and also inspire us make something of our own style. There’s a display of many things like occupation, arts, old Bombay maps, craftsmanship etc. The history about the object wasn’t written on all the things but the tour guide told us story of most of the objects. So it is necessary to always take a tour guide with you.
My project was to take 2 things from the museum and do deep research on that. One of the best things I saw were miniature Mughal paintings with Persian script on it done by great artists from Mughal period. Tour guide told us that some painting were the scenes taken from the moral stories written in Quran. Other thing I found fascinating was the strategy that Mughals used for their currency. If you look at the coin issued by any Mughal emperor, you will know a lot about that emperor because they put impressions of their names , date and skills of them that they are proud of. This was my first visit to any museum and it was great and will definitely visit more of them after this pandemic.
(All photos and information sent to ‘The Museum Memories Project’ are copyright of ‘The Museum Memories Project’ – kindly do not use without permission. Write to us: museummemoriesproject@gmail.com)
We are pasting below the links to one of India’s best conservation architects, Vikas Dilawari, who gave his best to restore and conserve the fantastic CSMVS. We spoke to him last year – twice.
VarnikaDesigns 
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