DR. SUNAYANA RATHORE
CURATOR Mehrangarh Museum,
Jodhpur, Rajasthan
Visiting a museum gives a feeling of revisiting the past and enables a scientific understanding of culture. The basic idea of museums has evolved throughout history and is still in an ever changing process. It’s a constant responsibility to cater to the changing audience that has kept the Mehrangarh fort museum into limelight for almost 50 years now.
The foundations of the Mehrangarh Fort, carved out of a rocky hillside 400 feet above Jodhpur, were laid in 1459 as a military stronghold. The Fort, described by Rudyard Kipling after a visit in the late 1800s as “a palace that might have been built by Titans and colored by the morning sun,” has been the seat of the Rathore dynasty since then, serving as a royal residence, a center of cultural patronage, and a place of worship for the royal clan. Today, it houses the collection of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust, one of the most important and best-preserved collections of fine and applied arts from the Mughal period of Indian history.
It’s interesting to learn how a single dynasty acquired and commissioned objects over the course of more than 400 years to leverage patronage, diplomacy, matrimonial alliances, trade, and conquest. The Mehrangarh museum holds a collection of more than 30,000 objects from Indian courtly life, including paintings, decorative arts and furniture, tents, canopies, carpets, textiles, and weapons. Lavishly made ceremonial objects, finely crafted arms and armor, sumptuous jewels, intricately carved furnishings and more illuminate the dynamic history of Marwar-Jodhpur and the Rathore dynasty that ruled it for over seven centuries.
A handful of carefully chosen objects from the notable collection are displayed in galleries and period rooms of the fort and provide an opportunity to the visitors to experience the unprecedented rich cultural history of Marwar.
Formation of the Jodhpur collection goes back to 1909, when an exhibition of articles made in Marwar was held in Jodhpur and it was afterwards changed into an Industrial Museum. In 1914 to keep pace with the development of museology in India, it was converted into a full-fledged museum on a modest basis. The museum contained several sections falling under categories like Fine Art, Archaeology, Numismatics etc.
The museum contained several sections falling under categories like Fine Art, Archaeology, Numismatics etc. Later when Mehrangarh Museum Trust was founded in 1972, some of the collection was donated to the trust and the rest remained with the government museums in Jodhpur. The other portions of the collection were donated to the trsut by the Royal family of Jodhpur. The principal objectives of the trust were to conserve collection and architecture of the fort and to promote public interest in Marwar’s royal heritage. It has been a long but successful journey since the foundation and the future of the museum is a constant planning process.
The Trust is now working on a Museum Redevelopment Programme that promises to have substantial impact on further increasing the visitor numbers and also enhancing the credibility of the institution. Though the forts basic architecture is designed for inaccessibility, we have worked on making it accessible by adding facilities like ramps and elevator for the physically challenged and senior citizens visiting our premises. The idea of accessibility for all has been our primary agenda while rethinking the Museum.
There is also a museum shop inside the premises which is already an example for museum merchandising and design for other museums in India. The shop is very popular because of its uniquely designed products inspired by the museum collection and architecture of the Fort. The fort also offers platform to local artists by supporting their art, specially those that might get extinct if not given attention now. The artists who have been making certain things like jutis, tie & die textiles, block printing, bone carving, lac ornaments, durrie weaving etc. are invited to showcase their art and sell them to the tourists visiting the fort.
The Mehrangarh Museum is also building a new visitor centre and offers an increased and better parking (area 187186 sq. ft.) facility for the visitors. We hope that this Museum Redevelopment Programme becomes a case study for interpretive planning and ‘An Indian Model’ for museum development for the future generations.
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Originally published in Museum Mosaic 2023, published 2024.
Part of our annual review. Descriptions reflect the publication’s reporting period.
