Make them time machines
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Museums in India fail to evoke a deep sense of empathy with the past. HUGH and COLLEEN GANTZER offer suggestions on how to transform them by looking at examples abroad.
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Mamallapuram's descent of the Ganga -- evidence of an earlier tsunami?
SIXTEEN years ago we saw it. In 1989, shooting the monuments of Mahabalipuram (now Mamallapuram), near Chennai, for our TV travel series, "Looking Beyond", we were struck by an odd fact. For some strange reason, the Pallava sculptors had stopped working, abruptly. Half-finished carvings stood unfinished; rock-faces had been chipped and prepared but no works of art had ever graced them. And yet there was no evidence of disrupting wars, revolutions or devastating epidemics. So why did it stop? And then we noticed the persistently repetitive theme of rescue from a cataclysm: the Descent of the Ganga, the Lifting of Mount Goverdhan, Avatar Varaha Raising the Earth from the Deep, and the very significant idol of Lord Vishnu reclining on the coils of the Sheshnag embodiment of the power of the primeval Ocean. Our commentary said:-
We could almost hear the Pallavas praying: "Lord Vishnu preserve us. Bring peace and quiet to the power of the ocean". Were the carvers stopped by the great waves boiling out of the sea?... Was this Shore Temple designed to stop the storm?
Now, after the devastation of the tsunami, we seem to have been prescient. In fact, we believe that anyone with a little imagination and knowledge of history, and the need to bind seemingly disparate images into a cohesive whole, would have come to the same conclusion. And that is exactly what museums should do. They must make the visitor empathise with the environment in which the exhibits were created. They must be dynamic time machines, not static glass coffins.
An example, in Pondicherry
HUGH and COLLEEN GANTZER
An audio guide covers the state room of Buckingham Palace.
One of the worst examples of an unimaginative museum is the one in Pondicherry. When we first visited it, many years ago, we were delighted to find that they had assembled French colonial furniture and displayed it with great sensitivity. We felt as if the Dupleixs had just stepped out of their mansion. Last year, however, we were dismayed. The Drawing Room furniture had been rearranged to replicate a Chola court with a high-backed chair in the centre of the room ringed by those of lesser mortals. And the grandfather's clock had been moved into the bedroom. We could see Joseph-Francois and Jeanne leaping out of their four-poster on the hour, every chimed hour, all through the night! It is an absurd juxtapositioning of exhibits.
Most of our museums are almost as bad in spite of the fact that our history is the richest and most varied in the world. In marked contrast to our lackadaisical approach is what the imaginative Scots have done with Culloden. The field of Culloden is dotted with stone markers ostensibly identifying where clan leaders fell in their 40-minute battle with the English in 1746. The battle was a blip on English history but a sore defeat for the Highlanders. And the Scots don't let any visitor forget their continued anguish. Rather reluctantly we entered their auditorium but, when we emerged, we had tears in our eyes and a seething rage in our hearts against the perfidious English! Our hyped-up anger did not last long but the experience gave us a lasting insight into Anglo-Scottish relationships. Arcot would lend itself to similar treatment but there's nothing there to conjure up that epochal conflict.
Audio visuals are not the only way to evoke the past. In the Roman Baths and the excellent Costume Museum, both in Bath, as well as in Buckingham Palace, our entrance tickets covered the hire of audio-guides: point-to-point commentaries on our personal tape recorders. It was the next best thing to being accompanied by expert historians. There is no reason why these should not be standard equipment in all our major museums and archaeological sites.
In Dubai
A tethered hot air balloon is one of the many experiences offered by the Transport Museum, Lucerne.
No guides accompanied us as we descended down a spiral staircase and into the past of Dubai. Above ground, glittering skyscrapers soared; here, in this air-conditioned subterranean museum we walked down narrow, winding, alleyways where spice traders haggled, artisans created their traditional jewellery, a blacksmith worked on his forge, and an encampment of Bedou spoke softly in a moonlit, desert, camp. Such dioramas, suitably lit and wired for sound, would bring our chequered history alive in a virtual-reality encounter with our past. Every state should be proud to project its heritage in such a three-dimensional way but we must resist the temptation of exaggerating real-life people into larger-than-life mythological dimensions.
This line has been entertainingly crossed in the Mystery Park of Erik von Daniken of Interlaken, Switzerland. The park is, in effect, a museum devoted to van Daniken's theories about the puzzling achievements of pre-history: the Pyramids, the strange markings in a South American desert, the incredible Calendar of the Mayas, Stonehenge and even our own vimanas. He believes that all these were created by visitors from outer space. The park is a hi-tech theatre with lasers, three-dimensional visuals, sound effects and even under-floor projections to give the effect of flying.
We can visualise an India Park with separate auditoria devoted to the real life achievements of Ashoka, Raja Raja Chola, Chandragupta Maurya, Gautama Buddha and Akbar, to start with. It will certainly be more appealing than mythological movies! And it will have a more lasting impact.
The Viking village
York's Yorvik Viking Village made such a deep impression on us. Builders in Britain's town of York unearthed the remains of an old Viking Village. All construction work stopped and the authorities concerned with preserving the heritage of their historic city took over. There, deep below the modern city, they re-created the Viking Village. As we descended in the lift we went backwards in time: past modern cars and TVs, left behind the first automobiles and radios, slid over bicycles and carts, stopped at the base platform where we boarded time capsules. And then we rolled through the Viking Village. Animated figures of women washed clothes, babies bawled, roosters crowed, blacksmiths worked at their forges. We even passed the village cesspool where a foetid stench assailed our nostrils. It was a multi-sensory experience. The fascinating history of Chennai can be encapsulated into such a tour with dioramas, animated figures and laser images. Given our involvement with IT and the increasing levels of disposable income we have no doubt that it will be a commercially viable venture offering the perfect combination of education and entertainment.
Harnessing technology
In fact, given the phenomenal success of our IT industry, the big players should get together to create a Museum of Information Technology. This should offer hands-on experiences of the magic of IT. We experienced this in the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) in London, and also in the Transport Museum in Switzerland's Lucerne. In MOMI, dedicated to the history and development of cinema and TV, visitors created their own Wild West movies. In Lucerne, couples locked themselves in a simulator and piloted their own "Space Shuttle" back to earth, rode a hot air tethered balloon high above the lake town. Both were unforgettable encounters with realities far removed from their normal lives: which is what a time machine should do.
Singapore is so authentic
A diorama enriches the `time-travel' experience in Dubai.
The ultimate time machines, however, can be boarded in the Singapore Discovery Centre. As their blurb advertised: Hear the Past, See the Present, Touch the Future. Created largely to train the island republic's defence personnel, it also gave us a mind-boggling tour of what Singapore's past was like when it was a rambunctious turbulent town; allowed us to share a day in the life of a few present-day Singaporeans; and soared us into the future of this ambitious city. There was also pure entertainment, particularly in the Motion Simulator where we "flew" in a jet fighter, "rode" a battle tank and took part in a battle at sea. We had to be strapped into our seats because they tilted and bucked and juddered in response to the action on the large screen. It was so authentic that every seat had a panic button to bring things to a stop if one couldn't take it any more. Military museums are designed to convince cynical tax-payers that the armed forces are worth all that is spent on them. This seven-minute ride felt like a day-long encounter and would be enough to change the most hard-bitten pacifists into converts!
And that, really, is what museums should do. They should evoke a deep and abiding sense of empathy with other times, other ways of life, other situations. They must transform history from a mind-numbing repetition of dates to a living experience. For instance, unless an effective Museum of the Deep comes up, the titanic power of the ocean will again become a fading memory in most people's minds. They will, very conveniently, forget the past, as the descendants of the Pallavas did in spite of the graphic images of Mahabalipuram. But the past is the foundation on which we build and protect the present and aspire to create the future. We, cannot, afford to forget it: those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.
Which is why our museums must be creatively exciting Time Machines, not unimaginatively dreary Glass Coffins ... .
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