HYDERABAD: Love to visit museums? But, hard pressed for time or find travelling in city’s heavy traffic cumbersome. The administration of Salar Jung Museum has come up with a solution for the sake of art aficionados and heritage enthusiasts.
One of the country’s prominent national museums and one of the largest in the world, the Salar Jung Museum has started a special online exhibition, showcasing the digitalised versions of its rare collection of sculptures, paintings, carvings, textiles, manuscripts, ceramics and artefacts. These centuries-old collections, along with various details including their history, are on virtual display on the Google Arts and Culture platform.
The online exhibition features a variety of swords with a few archived inscriptions, paintings and portraits of Nawabs under the theme “Symbols of Glory”. This section also displays a double-edged sword, ceremonial sword of Salar Jung III, Shamshir and Nagan among others.
Apart from this, a selection of Indian wooden artefacts are on display under “Wonders in Wood” while “A Games of Thrones, How Chess Conquered the World,” depicts the evolution of the game. “Nizam II of Hyderabad on a Expedition” explores a royal Deccani artwork by court artist Rai Venkatachallam through an in-painting journey, “Magic of Bronze” and “Indian Epics in Arts” among others.
Speaking to TNIE, Anuradha Reddy, Convenor of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), said: “Digitalisation of these artefacts is indeed a good initiative as it gives access to people who cannot visit museums in person. Even for people who plan to visit the museum, this acts as a preview and helps them in understanding what is being exhibited and what they can focus on based on their interest.”“This virtual format has been adopted in several western museums. Even for Salar Jung Museum, there have been discussions about taking it online for a while now,” she said.
“As museums are usually large and have huge collections, and require a lot of time to discover each artefact, these online exhibitions help the ‘visitors’ in exploring and interpreting them at their own pace. In addition to this, if there is a space constraint to display certain contents, they can also be displayed online,” she added.
This online exhibition is being organised in collaboration with LIFE Photo Collection, along with museums like Lahore Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The British Museum and Indian Museum Kolkata among others.