Intangible Cultural Heritage and the New Museum Movement- Examples from India

Abstract

New Museology follows a direction, formulated at the beginning of the 1980s by members of the International Council of Museums (Gansmayr 1989: 79-84,). Instigated by a debate about demands for the representation and participation of indigenous peoples and led foremost by museum scholars from the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, New Museology strives towards close cooperation with various public groups and their social empowerment. With the premises of New Museology, museums are seen as “spaces of social communication” and inclusion (see Dodd /Sandell 2001). The paper discusses the New Museum Movement in India. It focuses on prominent New Museology examples and the issue of Intangible Cultural Heritage as a meaningful instrument for cultural preservation and revitalization in India. Since the 1980s the New Museum Movement in India was formulated with new guidelines for Indian museology (Bhatnagar in 1999: 63-65). In these guidelines, the whole of India and its inhabitants were understood as parts and participants of a museum. Inspired by the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, local communities were seen as the museum's fundaments. The new museology of India has been conceived a community-based eco-museology where local cultures were supposed to act as curators, narrators and teachers of their own cultural heritage. The role of museum-professionals was supposed to be restricted to supporting and mediating these activities. In this context, especially marginalised and officially silenced communities such as the Adivasi (indigenous peoples of India) were to be included in museum representation