Indian Museum heritage exhibition a living archive of Kol’s memory
Times of India | 27 November 2025
Kolkata: A special exhibition has transformed Indian Museum into a living archive of Kolkata's memory. "Breathing with History", unveiled this week, is an expansive exhibition featuring rare books, artefacts, photographs, textiles, craft traditions, archaeological finds, scientific instruments, and cultural objects from more than two dozen institutions. Curated by the Emami Foundation as part of the Ami Art Festival, the exhibition invites visitors to explore the intimate material traces of the city and its surrounding regions.
The exhibition opens with three seminal books — Raja Binay Krishna Deb's ‘Early History & Growth of Calcutta', Kathleen Blechynden's ‘Calcutta Past & Present', and Pramathanath Mallik's ‘Kolikatar Katha' — mapping the city's emergence from marshland to metropolis. Two CPW-mark porcelain dolls, Kalighat paintings of Kali, Shiva, and Parvati, and a collection of colonial-era studio photographs anchor Kolkata's aesthetic and social transitions.
A Bengali section — ‘Darpan' — documents the architectural heritage of Andul through rare photographs: the 350-year-old Greco-inspired pillars of Anand Dham Palace, the Kundu and Dutta Chowdhury mansions, ancient thakur dalans, early terracotta temples of Howrah district, and household objects.
Archaeology takes centre stage through contributions from Sundarban Pratna Gobesona Kendra, which displays artefacts recovered around the 10th-century Jatar Deul site in Kankandighi. "These finds prove Sunderbans once flourished with Shaiva, Buddhist, Jaina, and Vajrayana cultures," said deputy director, Indian Museum, Sayan Bhattacharya.
Another section showcases Krishnachandrapur Archaeological Museum's 25 artefacts and a 3D archaeological map of the region.
Institutions such as NATMO, Botanical Survey of India, Chandernagore College Museum, Sanskriti Museum, Birla Industrial & Technological Museum, REACH Foundation, and the PC Mahalanobis Memorial Museum have enriched the exhibition with cartographic instruments, basketry, sholapith works, textile traditions, French-Indian objects, terracotta craft models, conservation case studies, and statistical archives. Textiles from the Karbi community, Sohrai and Khovar mural traditions from Jharkhand, and scroll paintings from Pingla add contemporary vibrancy to the spread.
"The exhibition succeeds as a living, breathing archive," said Sachindranath Bhattacharya, former head of museology, Calcutta University.