Category Museums

Founded in 1756 as a branch of the British Museum, the NHM became an independent institution in 1963. Since 1881, the museum is housed in an imposing Victorian-style building designed by English architect Alfred Waterhouse.
An extension designed by the Danish firm C.F. Møller, the Darwin Centre, was opened in 2009.
Together with the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, the HNM is one of the three major museums located on Exhibition Road, in South Kensington, one of the most renowned cultural districts in Europe.

The program of events and activities of the NHM features temporary exhibitions, special events, guided tours, workshops, and educational programs. The museum includes three shops, four cafes, a grill restaurant, and a free picnic area.
Most of the Natural History Museum is accessible to people with disabilities; a limited number of wheelchairs are available, free of charge.

High above the Museum’s main attractions there’s another decorative feature that’s easy to miss, unless you know where to look.

The building’s gallery ceilings are adorned with intricate tiles displaying a vast array of plants from all over the world, with Hintze Hall’s ceiling alone covered with 162 individual panels.

These beautifully designed tiles reflect an era when exotic plant specimens flooded into Britain, sparking public interest in botany and horticulture.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Ahmedabad is a city of museums — kite museum, a museum of utensils, a world-class textile museum, toy museum and more. The museum that opened to the public last year, is just a 100 metres away from the famed Calico Museum of Textiles in Shahibaug.

At first, the architecture of this colonial structure draws you in, before the masterpieces inside take over.

The pathway, flanked by well-landscaped lush green lawns and a two-tier fountain, leads you to the 113-year-old mansion, which was once home to the Lalbhai family. Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum is one of the few examples of a house turned into a museum, in the country.

Today, the three buildings in the complex display a collection of traditional and folk art from various schools — Persian, Mughal, Rajput, Pahari and modern and contemporary Indian art.

There is also a small amphitheatre to screen films and intimate performances.

While a part of the collection — particularly manuscripts, archival documents — went to the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Institute of Indology, an engaging narrative of Indian art’s journey unfolds at Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum. It’s impossible to ignore one of the oldest versions of the ‘Khamsa of Nizami’. This is the illustrated khamsa or the five poems by the 12th-Century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi.

The visitor can flip through the pages of the manuscript on an iPad. Another rare work in the section is 13 episodes (watercolour, 1920) of the Ramayana painted by Nandalal Bose. You can spend hours trying to read postcards sent by students to teachers in Santiniketan from 1913-1940.

 

Picture Credit : Google