Bhau Daji Lad reaches out to many

Museum attracts around 4,000 people each week

Looks like the recently-restored Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum will become a rallying point for the different communities of Mumbai.

After an exclusive walkthrough for the who’s who of Mumbai on Wednesday, many of them want to use the space for various purposes.

An educationist says she wants to have 300 school principals and teachers visit the museum and in turn inform their students about it. A thespian says he wants to use the lawns for plays. And a technical institute wants to tie-up for future conservation projects.

The museum opened on January 4, and has had a slew of visitors — around 1,000 on weekdays and nearly 3,000 on the weekends. But if it has to be promoted among different communities, as Tasneem Mehta, convenor of Intach, which partnered on the restoration project, says, “It is important to have those that matter, in for a look.”

For many, the lure was a guided tour by Mehta herself; who can resist a personalised, all-questions-answered walk-through by the restorers themselves, without having to jostle with crowds?

After a brief audio-video presentation, Mehta talked the group through the various sections: The artefacts’ galleries with pottery, brass work, ivory and wood items, textiles, miniatures and early paintings from the JJ School of Art and such; and an exhaustive Bombay history section, including representations of the communities that shaped it.

“The event was part of an ongoing celebration of the Bhau Daji Lad,” says Mehta. “It was in terrible shape and has been closed for four years. Many people don’t know it has opened again.”

Although the best validation for work at Bhau Daji Lad has been the recent Unesco 2005 Asia-Pacific Award of Excellence for Conservation, there were a fair number from Wednesday’s visitors too.

While most people — well-travelled art and heritage-lovers — said the Bhau Daji was on par with other museums in the world, including the Victoria & Albert in London, some, like former secretary DT Joseph, said (referring to the maps in the Bombay’s History section) that he finally had “proof that the Cumbala and Malabar Hills were joined”.

Another visitor was struck by the life-like displays (though some clay models and layouts could have had more finesse). But the best compliment that Team Bhau Daji — a public private partnership between Intach, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation — could have received, was that they had shown the way for creating a world-class entity; something that the city could take a lesson from.

 “Bhau Daji is a museum about what 19th century art museums looked like,” says Mehta. “A huge amount of research over four years went into it. So when people appreciate how we’ve preserved the authenticity and yet managed to upgrade it, it is deeply rewarding.”

Harsh Goenka, Alyque Padamsee, Niraj Bajaj, Charles Correa and Dolly Thakore were among the invitees for the walkthrough.
l_ghosh@dnaindia.net