Transcending Boundaries at International Museum Expo 2023

Culture and Heritage
History, Culture
Panel Discussion
Thursday, 18th May 2023
to Saturday, 20th May 2023

From 2:00pm to 3:00pm (IST)
Free

Details

Avid Learning is delighted to curate the 'Transcending Boundaries’ panel at the International Museum Expo 2023 hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Government of India from May 18th to 20th at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi. The expo aims to facilitate a holistic conversation and showcase the diverse cultural heritage exhibited by various museums across the country. This three-day event will take place from May 18th to 20th at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi.

Avid Learning is proud to support the International Museum Expo 2023 in its mission to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of India's museums. The event promises to be an enriching experience, bringing together thought leaders, cultural enthusiasts, and museum professionals to shape the future of the Indian museum landscape.

As part of the Expo's engaging lineup, on the first day, CEO, Avid Learning Asad Lalljee will be moderating the panel discussion Transcending Boundaries with a diverse group of museum founders and directors including Director, Indian Music Experience Museum, Bangalore Preema John, Founder, The 1947 Partition Archive Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla, Co-Founder, Tram Arts Trust & Museum of Ordinary Objects Choiti Ghosh, Founder, The Human Library Mumbai Aandaleeb Qureshi, Ideator, The Museum of Possibilities and Member, Disability Rights Alliance Vaishnavi Jayakumar, Founder and Editor, Indian Memory Project Anusha Yadav, and Founder, Museum Memories Project Poulomi Das. This session will delve into the evolution of non-conventional museums and their impact on artistic expression, highlighting the innovative approaches being taken to break free from established traditions.


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Gallery

Transcending Boundaries at International Museum Expo 2023
Transcending Boundaries at International Museum Expo 2023
Transcending Boundaries at International Museum Expo 2023
Transcending Boundaries at International Museum Expo 2023

Faculty

Asad Lalljee

Asad Lalljee

SVP, Essar Group and CEO of Avid Learning Curator, Royal Opera House, Mumbai

Asad Lalljee is SVP, Essar Group, CEO of Avid Learning, a public programming initiative and creative platform under the Essar Group, and Curator, Royal Opera House, Mumbai. Prior to relocating to India, Asad worked for 14 years as one of the ‘Mad Men’ advertising executives on New York's Madison Avenue. Asad has transformed Avid Learning into India’s leading cultural hub through international collaborations and partnering with the biggest art platforms in the country. Since the restoration of the Royal Opera House, Asad’a curatorial programming has re-established its reputation as the city’s cultural crown jewel. He is also serving on the Kala Ghoda Association’s Executive Committee and the advisory board of the Mumbai Urban Art Festival for 2022-23. In the midst of the pandemic (April 2020), Asad pivoted from AVID to AVID ONLINE, presenting 240 programs in a year. An early technology trend adopter, he takes a special interest in new media curating programs around NFTs and the cyberfuture.

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Preema John

Preema John

Director, Indian Music Experience Museum, Bangalore

Preema John is the Director of the Indian Music Experience Museum, in Bangalore. It is India’s first and only interactive music museum, dedicated to showcasing the history and development of music in India. Preema is a critically engaged arts administrator and cultural producer, inspired by the power of art to transform individuals and communities. She works across disciplines with a focus on public access, public presentation and reception of art. She has worked on several national and international cultural projects and held leadership positions in arts organizations including Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Asia Society and Kochi Biennale Foundation. A Fulbright Fellow, she was previously Head of Art for Maker Maxity/Jio World Drive and Deputy Director of Asia Society India Centre in Mumbai. She holds a Masters in Arts Administration & Cultural Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Masters in Arts & Aesthetics from Jawaharlal Nehru University. 

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Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla

Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla

Founder, The 1947 Partition Archive

Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla is the founder of The 1947 Partition Archive, an organization that documents oral histories from survivors of India and Pakistan's 1947 Partition. After a 2008 visit to the oral testimony archives at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, she was inspired and began interviewing Partition witnesses in 2009. Troubled with the realization that the generation of eyewitnesses was nearly gone and taking their lore with them, she devised the concept of crowdsourcing oral histories of Partition. In 2011 The 1947 Partition Archive was born and has through today documented nearly 11,000 Partition witnesses' accounts. Previously, she was an experimental condensed matter physicist who completed her tenure as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California in Berkeley. Underneath it all, she is a visual artist who won numerous awards for her works throughout her school day, before diverting her creativity to the hard sciences, and now, oral history.

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Choiti Ghosh

Choiti Ghosh

Co-Founder, Tram Arts Trust & Museum of Ordinary Objects

Choiti Ghosh is an Object Theatre artist and artistic director of the Mumbai-Delhi based object theatre company ~ Tram Arts Trust. She worked with some of India's leading directors and companies before finding herself in a masterclass under Belgian Object Theatre artiste Agnés Limbos at Institut International de la Marionnette (IIM), Charleville Mezieres, France (2010). Choiti has since found the greatest joy in telling object-stories!Tram’s works include creating object-centred theatre, workshops and training programmes; mentorships and micro-grants, national and international festivals; and museum-based engagements, including the Museum of Ordinary Objects in collaboration with Harkat Studios & Extension Arts. Tram’s works have been presented in festivals and venues across India and the world. Choiti was a researcher-in-residence at the Deutsches Forum fur Figurentheatre und Puppenspeilkunst, Germany & at the IIM, France. She received the Sahitya Rangabhoomi Vinod Doshi Fellowship (2011) and Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar by Sangeet Nataka Akademi, in 2015.

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Aandaleeb Qureshi

Aandaleeb Qureshi

Founder, The Human Library Mumbai

Aandaleeb Qureshi is not a typical social changemaker. She works her way by adding value rather than noise to make a dent in the social fabric. Her effort has been to create a space and environment of zero stigmas and non-judgments through lesser-understood areas of human emotions, through non-scripted real-life storytelling. Her passionate project called ‘Human Library Mumbai’ has brought about a revolution in the city of Mumbai which never stopped to sleep but now stops to read ‘Humans’.She has created a neutral and encouraging space where people are presented as ‘Human Books’ borrowed by fellow humans for reading their lives through a face-to-face dialogue on stigmas and taboos. The Human books have lived with, thus breaking the stereotypes and judgements, on various topics that have ostracised people in society but not anymore.With an aim to create a more tolerant and empathetic society, she switched from her career of 8 years in the corporate pharmaceutical sector such as BMS (U.S.A), Pfizer (India) and Zoetis (India) to the social sector to live life with an impactful purpose. She holds an M.Sc. in Engineering Management from Syracuse University (U.S.A) and a Certificate in Social Entrepreneurship from the University of Oxford (U.K). Keen on contributing to social impact, she works as Maharashtra State Communications Officer in the public health sector through John Snow Inc.She believes empathy is the force that can truly salvage our lives. Helping the young through volunteering as a teacher with ‘Teach For India’ is where she further emboldens her beliefs.She loves to surround herself with music in any way- be it through singing or salsa dancing. Aandaleeb has been a guest speaker at various avenues such as TEDx, Trailblazer Summits etc., and featured in leading International news channels such as Times of India, CNBC-TV18, and Gulf News to name a few.

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Vaishnavi Jayakumar

Vaishnavi Jayakumar

Ideator, The Museum of Possibilities and Member, Disability Rights Alliance

Vaishnavi Jayakumar is a cross-disability rights activist, with a focus on enabling equal participation by advocating for accessible public spaces and transport. She has worked with government agencies, including the Election Commission of India, Chennai Metro Rail Limited and Chennai Corporation, to facilitate solutions that would allow disabled persons to exercise their rights to vote, to free movement and to recreation. As co-founder of The Banyan, (a path-breaking non-profit that works with persons living with mental illness, especially among women and homeless persons) she has received multiple awards including the Sree Sakthi Puraskar from the Indian Government. Vaishnavi has often been at the forefront of coordinating civilian responses to crises from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami to 2015 Chennai floods and the Covid-19 pandemic. Although she dropped out of an MBA course to help start The Banyan, Vaishnavi is an autodidact with interests that range from anthropology and ethics to data informatics, health policy, homelessness and disaster management.

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Anusha Yadav

Anusha Yadav

Founder and Editor, Indian Memory Project

After graduating from NID, India in 1997, Anusha commenced a cross-disciplinary career path that comprises editorial design, experimental photography/portraiture, an extraordinary online archive and as a Family legacy design advisor. In 2010, an integrative concept of personal histories, and storytelling through editorial design and family photographs led to a photography-narrative-based online archive titled Indian Memory Project. The project’s pioneering concept has since inspired several institutions, and collectives around the world to develop similar projects; it is considered an invaluable asset to the people of the Indian Subcontinent, as well as the global academe. Over the last 25 years, Anusha has worked on several national and international commissions and her works have been presented on esteemed panels and media, around the world.She is the recipient of accolades from the International Design Award for Human Intelligence (China), Prix Ars Electronica (Europe), L’oreal Paris Femina Women Achievement, and Innovator of the Year by India Today Women’s Summit.

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Poulomi Das

Poulomi Das

Founder, Museum Memories Project

Poulomi Das is a multi-disciplinary consultant in the museums & heritage sector, a cultural interpreter, educator and blogger. She has over 20 years of experience in research and documentation of Indian arts, textiles, and heritage. She is the Co-Founder of VarnikaDesigns, since 2010. She is the Founder of the ‘The Museum Memories Project’ oral history documentation project since April 2020, the only one in the world which invites memories of museums visited by individuals across the globe. She has been a Senior Assistant Curator, Special Exhibitions & Marketing, and Outreach Officer for the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum. She has consulted with several museums and archival projects, including those at the Bihar and Buddha Smriti Park Museums and the RBI’s Monetary Museum. She is also a visiting faculty at several Indian institutions. Poulomi is a Nehru Trust and Charles Wallace Fellow in 2015 and 2006 to the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. She is also an International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) Fellow of the US government in 2010. You can see her blog at www.varnikadesigns.blog and her website is www.varnikadesigns.com and www.themumeproject.com

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Collaborations

Ministry of Culture, Government of India
Ministry of Culture, Government of India


Blog

What is a Museum?

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) defines a museum as follows  “A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets, and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”

International Museum Day

A resolution was adopted during the ICOM General Assembly in Moscow, Russia to create an annual event “with the aim of further unifying the creative aspirations and efforts of museums and drawing the attention of the world public to their activity” which led to the official establishment of International Museum Day in 1977. This day is celebrated to convey the message that  “Museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation, and peace among peoples.” The theme for Internation Museum Day 2023 is Museums, Sustainability, and Well Being.

Changing Role of Museums

Museums have come a long way from the cabinets of curiosities to modern-day digital museums. The earliest museums were private collections shared with only a close group of people. Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum, collected and curated by Princess Ennigaldi dated from 530 BC is said to be the oldest known museum, located in Ur. The first public museum opened in Rome followed by several other museums all across the globe. Earlier museums served as significant centers for preserving, studying, and displaying art, natural history, and cultural artifacts, paving the futuristic way for today's diverse and engaging museum experiences. 


Indian museums

The Museums in India have continued to evolve from the first museum in Calcutta in 1814 called the ‘Indian Museum’ to the most recently opened Museum of Art and Photography in Banglore. Currently, India has around 1186 museums comprising both public museums under the Central, State governments and private museums spread across the country. The museums directly under the Ministry of Culture include the National Museum, Delhi, National Gallery of Modern Art (Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru), Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya, Delhi, Indian Museum, Kolkata, Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, Salar Jung Museum, Hyderabad, Allahabad Museum, Prayagraj, Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal, and National Council of Science Museums. 


Internation Museum Expo 2023

The International Museum Expo 2023, a three-day event is organized by the Ministry of Culture from the 18th to the 20th of May 2023 in Delhi to celebrate International Museum Day. The expo aims to promote a holistic conversation around India’s rich and diverse cultural heritage exhibited by museums across the country. It will promote cross-cultural learning and understanding with various events around museums and technology, several seminars, workshops, and panel discussions highlighting the recent advancements in the museum sector.




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