The Indian Museum in Kolkata holds the distinction of being India’s largest (and oldest) museum and the world’s ninth-oldest regular museum. Sounds impressive, but unfortunately the place itself isn’t all that great- or maybe that was just because we were unlucky enough to visit it at a time when parts of it were closed for renovations. The museum’s housed in a large and fairly imposing white building on Jawaharlal Nehru Road (the building dates back to 1878, although the museum itself was established in 1814, at the office of the Asiatic Society). Sixty galleries surround a central garden, where you can sit down for a breather- which you’ll definitely need if you’re planning on going through the entire museum.Among the Museum’s important galleries are ones on Art, Archaeology, Botany, Zoology and Geology- an impressive enough collection. The section on Indian artifacts is especially good- it includes fabulous stone sculptures, both religious and secular, and represent nearly all of India’s major historical schools of art: Gandhara, Mathura, Vengi, Sarnath, Pala, Hoysala and more. They’re worth a look (in fact, I’d go as far as to say they’re the main reason to visit this museum); the sculptures, both stone and bronze, are truly spectacular, with cavorting gods and goddesses, depictions of the Buddha, a few `man on the street’ statues, and such like- most are at least five hundred years old, and some date back to BC. The labelling’s rather dry and leaves a lot to be desired, but what the hell- the stuff’s good.
Other than that, we had a look at the Zoological Galleries- dark, dusty, poorly labeled and with some unpleasant surprises (we actually caught a glimpse of a full term human foetus in formaldehyde- awful!) and the Prehistoric Gallery- replete with glyptodons, prehistoric elephants, bits of fossil and stuff like that.
On the whole, the Museum’s not the sort of place you’d want to go back to- after spending around two hours wandering through it, we decided we didn’t want to see anything else. The only section worth a look are the galleries on Indian sculpture- they’re really good.