THE FIRST gallery at the upcoming Yuge Yugeen Bharat National Museum is slated to open in a year’s time, while overall concept note for the museum — tipped to be the world’s largest — will be ready in the next 36 months, The Indian Express has learnt.
A consortium, led by architectural firm Arcop Associates, has emerged as the top bidder for design consultancy; the Ministry of Culture is floating the tender to finalise a content team soon, said sources who are aware of the proceedings. The first gallery of the museum is likely to be ready by next year-end, said the sources.
As part of the Central Vista project, the North Block and South Block buildings are slated for a phased restoration for the Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum project, which will replace National Museum. Once complete, this museum will be the largest in the world, spanning 1.55 lakh square metres.
As of now, the design team has conducted a preliminary survey of the North Block, which is almost vacant following the shifting of ministry offices to the Kartavya Bhawan buildings. Electrical fittings and wires are being cleared from the buildings, after which, partitions and walls that were over the years added to the building built by British architect Edwin Lutyens in the 1930s will also be removed, and the North Block will be restored to its original character. The South Block will be vacated over the next few months, with the PMO slated to move to the Executive Enclave.
The Arcop-led consortium has brought in an experienced team led by principal architect Kulapat Yantrasast, known for blending contemporary aesthetics with cultural sensitivity. Yantrasast, who co-founded the firm WHY Architecture in Los Angeles, has led acclaimed projects such as the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in LA, and designed two new galleries for the redevelopment of the Louvre in Paris.
The tender for the selection of a design consultant (architectural & exhibition design) for the Museum through open competitive bidding was published on July 9 by the Union Culture Ministry. It is learnt that 5 technical bids were received and all of them were invited to present their proposals last month. The selection panel zeroed in on Arcop Associates.
According to sources, the concept and museum design are still being finalised; it is expected that there will be eight sections in the museum, being covered through around 30 galleries spread over the two buildings, showcasing more than 20,000 artefacts, many of them rare articles sourced from various galleries across the country, besides the existing National Museum’s own collection.
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Officials said the content would play a central role in shaping how visitors engage with India’s past, present and future. Efforts are also being made to ensure a seamless integration between architectural design, exhibition design and visitors’ experience, they said. The project involves adaptive reuse of early 20th-century blocks into museum spaces.
Union Culture Minister Gajendra Shekhawat recently said, “On ground, work for the museum will begin by year end. By 2027 we will have the first of the eight museum verticals ready. Once ready, we expect a daily footfall of 50,000 at the museum.”
As reported by The Indian Express, the first gallery to come up on the ground floor of North Block is tentatively called ‘Time and Timelessness’, and is tipped to showcase around 100 landmark artefacts aiming to explore “Bharat’s civilisational relationship with time”, spanning “centuries of cultural, philosophical, and scientific evolution”.
The overarching theme of the Museum is 5,000 years of Indian civilisation, with the name signifying its “perennial” nature. As per the plan, the gallery will showcase thousands of years — starting with an Indus Valley terracotta hourglass created in Kalibangan between 2500-1700 BC; Gupta-period sculptures created in the 5th century, and Chola bronzes created in the 10th and 11th centuries in Tamil Nadu. Divided into thematic zones spread over the North and South Blocks, the museum will showcase historical events, personalities, ideas and achievements related to India’s past that have contributed to the making of its present.
