The National Museum in New Delhi is one of the largest museums

in India. Established in 1949, it holds variety of articles ranging from pre-

historic era to modern works of art. It functions under the Ministry of
Culture, Government of India. The museum is situated on the corner
of Janpath and Maulana Azad Road.[1] The museum has 200,000 works of art,
both of Indian and foreign origin, covering over 5,000 years.
It also houses the National Museum Institute of History of Arts, Conservation
and Museology established in 1983 and now a Deemed University since 1989,
and run Masters and Doctoral level courses in History of Art, Art
Conservation and Art restoration.

History
The National Museum, New Delhi, as we see it today, has an interesting
beginning. The blueprint for establishing the National Museum in Delhi was
prepared by the Maurice Gwyer Committee in May 1946. An Exhibition of
Indian Art, consisting of selected artefacts from various museums of India was
organized by the Royal Academy, London with the cooperation of Government
of India and Britain. The Exhibition went on display in the galleries of
Burlington House, London during the winter months of 1947-48. It was
decided to display the same collection in Delhi, before the return of exhibits to
their respective museums. An exhibition was organized in the the
RashtrapatiBhawan (President’s residence), New Delhi in 1949, which turned
out to be a great success. This event proved responsible for the creation of
the National Museum.
The success of this Exhibition led to the idea that advantage should be taken
of this magnificent collection to build up the nucleus collection of the National
Museum. State Governments, Museum authorities and private donors, who
had participated in the exhibition, were approached for the gift or loan of
artefacts, and most of them responded generously.
(Click here to see the gifts from various donors to the National Museum).
On August 15, 1949, the National Museum, New Delhi, was inaugurated in the
Rashtrapati Bhawan by Shri R.C. Rajagopalachari, the Governor-General of
India. The foundation of the present building was laid by Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, on May 12, 1955. The first phase of the
National Museumbuilding was formally inaugurated by Dr.
SarvepalliRadhakrishnan, the Vice President of India, on December 18, 1960.
The second phase of the building was completed in 1989.
While the Museum continued to grow its collection through gifts that were
sought painstakingly, artefacts were collected through its Arts Purchase
Committee. The Museum presently holds approximately 2,00,000 objects of a
diverse nature, both Indian as well as foreign, and its holdings cover a time
span of more than five thousand years of Indian cultural heritage.
The National Museum was initially looked after by the Director General of
Archaeology until 1957, when the Ministry of Education, Government of India,
declared it a separate institution and placed it under its own direct control. At
present, the National Museum is under the administrative control of the
Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
Collection
The museum has in its possession over 200,000 works of art, of both
Indian and foreign origin, covering more than 5,000 years of Indian cultural
heritage. Its rich holdings of various creative traditions and disciplines which
represents a unity amidst diversity, an unmatched blend of the past with the
present and strong perspective for the future, brings history to life. The
Buddhist art section has a most known for sacred relics of the Buddha (5th-4th
century B.C.) unearthed from Piprehwa, Basti district.The collections
covers archaeology, arms, armour, decorative
arts, jewellery, manuscripts, paintings, etc
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi (IGNCA) is the premier
government funded arts organization in India, as an autonomous institution under the
Union Ministry of Culture. Established in the memory of Indira Gandhi, late Indian
Prime Minister, and with Kapila Vatsyayan as its founding director.[1]

The IGNCA was launched on 19 November 1985 by the late Prime Minister Shri
Rajiv Gandhi at a function where the symbolism of the components was clearly
articulated at different levels. The elements - fire, water, earth, sky and vegetation -
were brought together. Five rocks from five five major rivers - Sindhu, Ganga, Kaveri,
Mahanadi and the Narmada (where the most ancient ammonite fossils are found)
were composed into sculptural forms. These will remain at the site as reminders of
the antiquity of Indian culture and the sacredness of her rivers and her rocks. In a
simulated pool, the first of the principles of vegetation, the lotus bloomed. Shri Rajiv
Gandhi floated lighted lamps on the water. The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the
Arts Trust was constituted and registered at New Delhi on 24 March 1987.

The founder trustees of IGNCA were Shri Rajiv Gandhi, Shri R. Venkataraman, Shri
P.V. Narasimha Rao, Smt. Pupul Jayakar, the Finance Minister of 1987, Shri H. Y.
Sharada Prasad and Dr. Kapila Vatsyayan.

The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, established in memory of Smt. Indira
Gandhi, is visualised as a centre encompassing the study and experience of all the
arts—each form with its own integrity, yet within a dimension of mutual
interdependence, interrelated with nature, social structure and cosmology.

This view of the arts, integrated with, and essential to the larger matrix of human
culture, is predicated upon Smt. Gandhi's recognition of the role of the arts as
essential to the integral quality of person, at home with himself and society. It
partakes of the holistic worldview so powerfully articulated throughout Indian
tradition, and emphasized by modern Indian leaders from Mahatma Gandhi to
Rabindranath Tagore.
The arts are here understood to comprise the fields of creative and critical literature,
written and oral; the visual arts, ranging from architecture, sculpture, painting and
graphics to general material culture, photography and film; the performing arts of
music, dance and theatre in their broadest connotation; and all else in fairs, festivals
and lifestyle that has an artistic dimension. In its initial stages the Centre will focus
attention on India; it will later expand its horizons to other civilizations and cultures.
Through diverse programmes of research, publication, training, creative activities
and performance, the IGNCA seeks to place the arts within the context of the natural
and human environment. The fundamental approach of the Centre is all its work will
be both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary.

Recognizing the need to encompass and preserve the distributed fragments of

Indian art and culture, a pioneering attempt has been made by Indira Gandhi
National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) to serve as a major resource centre for the arts,
especially written, oral and visual materials. One of the programmes of this centre, in
collaboration with UNDP, is to utilize multimedia computer technology to create a
wide variety of software packages that communicate cultural information. Multimedia
technology allows the user to interact and explore the subject in a non-linear mode
by combining audio, text, graphics, animation and video on a computer.