The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya completes one hundred years
Mumbai's iconic museum is an amazing cultural destination for its citizens
On 14th August 1905, prominent Mumbai citizens Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, Justice Badruddin Tyabji, Narotamdas Gokuldas, Justice Chandavarkar, Sassoon J. David, and others resolved at the Town Hall for a museum to commemorate the Prince of Wales’s visit to the city.
The Prince of Wales laid the museum foundation stone on 11th November 1905 for the Prince of Wales Museum of Western India. The Government of Bombay Presidency and the public’s donations contributed to the museum’s construction.
The Scottish architect George Wittet won the competition to design the Prince of Wales Museum in 1909 and built it in the Indo Saracenic style. George Wittet created the museum’s pillars on the Vimala Vasahi Temple in Mount Abu dome after Bijapur’s Gol Gumbaz and the jali or latticed screen from the Taj Mahal. In addition, Wittet purchased a wooden railing from a wada at Nashik and used it for the museum’s pavilion.
Today, when you enter the museum, you first see its beautiful hall of pillars and the arched pavilion at the entrance to enchant you about what the rest of the museum has in store. However, the museum’s majestic dome and a giant, hollow Buddha head on the lawns at the museum’s entrance are the key attractions you see even without entering inside.
Though the museum was ready by 1914, the start of the first World War made the Bombay Presidency use the structure as a military hospital, a hospital during the avian influenza of 1918-20, and children’s activities. The museum opened for the public on 10th January 2022, a hundred years ago.
The Prince of Wales Museum now goes by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSVMS) since 1995. The museum building is a Grade I heritage building and is a good example of heritage conservation. The museum has also retained its original landscape plan and has a nearly century-old Baobab tree on its campus at the children’s activity area.
The visitor center at the entrance holds the ticket counters, baggage collection and storage, security, museum shop, a two hundred seat auditorium, and restrooms. RMA Architects designed this modern structure in 2013, and it contrasts with the basalt stone boundary wall and the main building. One of the interesting parts of the visitor center is the retention of trees within and letting some of them grow through the steel roof.
The CSVMS is a unique museum with great maintenance, bright lighting, clear information, and it makes visiting it a pleasant experience for every visitor. However, you will need several days to see ten thousand objects on display from its vast collection of seventy thousand accessions. In preparation for its centenary, the museum commissioned conservation architect Vikas Dilawari to restore and preserve it from a century of weathering it faced since 1922. During the conservation, CSVMS displayed a few hundred objects but is now ready to welcome visitors to all sections.
The museum’s star attractions are its fourteen galleries in different categories that hold something of interest for every visitor with their wide variety of objects.
Art: Sculptures, Indian Miniatures, Himalayan Art, European Art, Chinese and Japanese Art, Prints, Indian Paintings, Indian Decorative Art,
History: Arms and Armour, Pre and protohistory,
Others: Natural History, Textiles and costumes, Jewellery, Currency
The museum’s must-see collections, which its website lists, include the following
A ninth-century AD bronze statue of Bahubali from Karnataka.
A fifth century AD terracotta statue of a Buddhist devotee from the Indo-Greek civilization at Mirpurkhas in Sindh at Pakistan.
A sixth century AD basalt Shiva from Baijanath Mahadeva temple at Parel in Gupta style of sculpture.
The Great Indian Hornbill at the Natural History gallery shows a male hornbill feeding a female inside a tree trunk incubating her eggs. The Great Hornbill is the Bombay Natural History Society mascot, a common sight across Mumbai a century ago.
A seventeenth-century Mughal jade bowl with intricate carving of a style which even Chinese emperors appreciated for its exquisite quality.
An ivory jewelry box of the twentieth century showcases the Mughal jaali technique in monuments but was common in boxes and screens.
A seventeenth-century folio of miniature Mewar paintings depicting Ramayana from the reign of Maharana Jagat Singh I, whose court artisan Manohar created the nineteen paintings of a folio at the museum’s Indian Miniature Painting Gallery.
The Gardener and the Bear painting is based on Anwar-I-Suhyali or Persian Panchatantra from the sixteen century AD Mughal era. This painting is one of 231 others in Mountstuart Elphinstone’s library that caught fire at Poona, causing varying degrees of damage to the paintings.
A thirteenth-century gilt-bronze Maitreya or the Buddha of the future from western Nepal embodying compassion.
A sixteenth-century AD gilt-bronze replica of Tibet’s King Songtsen Gampo, whom Tibetans worship as an Avalokiteshwara incarnation.
Emperor Akbar’s protection armor in steel damascene from the sixteenth century AD consisted of a breastplate, backplate, helmet, and arm guards. Damascene steel is based on wootz steel, whose Indian technique is two thousand years old and was lost around 1700 AD.
Chinese Snuff Bottles of jade, amber, porcelain, wood, ivory, and horn from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had carvings or cover overlays. Snuff, a mixture of tobacco and spices, originated in China due to European influence in the seventeenth century.
Gold Hon (coin) issued by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in the seventeenth century with the inscriptions ‘Chhatrapati’ and ‘Shri Raja Shiva.’
The museum has an object of the month each month that you can see at the museum and its website. In addition, since 2015, CSVMS’s Museum on Wheels air-conditioned bus has traveled in and out of Mumbai with a mobile exhibition as its outreach to developing an appreciation of heritage and culture among children.
After 2020 and 2021, when the museum was not open for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it offered virtual tours to the public.
The museum has a popular shop that sells stationery, handloom, handicrafts, jewelry, and daily use objects with its collection as their theme.
The museum café is a popular spot for the museum’s visitors.
Mumbai region residents looking for a great museum must-visit CSVMS at the city’s south with a historical garden and structure and having a vast collection that can keep visitors enthralled for hours.
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