Indian Museum Kolkata in India


Indian Museum Kolkata
Typemuseum
Owner
Address 27, Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Park Street
Zip-code 700016
Place Kolkata
StateWest Bengal
Country India
Website Website
Telephone(033) 2252 1790
Directors
Key People
Veterinarians
Elephant department
Head keepers
of elephants
Elephant keepers
Record history
History of updates2021-06-24
Latest document update2021-06-24 18:01:58
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Description

Indian Museum Kolkata, located at 27, Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Park Street, in Kolkata, West Bengal, India .


Comments / picturesThe Indian Museum in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, also referred to as the Imperial Museum at Calcutta in colonial-era texts,[2][3] is the ninth oldest museum in the world, the oldest museum in India, and the largest museum in India.[4][5][6][7][8][9][10] It has rare collections of antiques, armour and ornaments, fossils, skeletons, mummies and Mughal paintings. It was founded by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Kolkata (Calcutta), India, in 1814. The founder curator was Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist.

The Indian Museum originated from the Asiatic Society of Bengal which was created by Sir William Jones in 1784. The concept of having a museum arose in 1796 from members of the Asiatic Society as a place where man-made and natural objects collected could be kept, cared for and displayed.

On February 2, 1814, Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist, who had been captured in the siege of Serampore but later released, wrote to the council of the Asiatic Society for the formation of a museum out of his own collection and that of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, volunteering his service as a Curator wherein he proposed two sections—an archaeological, ethnological, a technical section and a geological and zoological one.[14] The council readily agreed and the Museum was created, with Wallich named the Honorary Curator and then Superintendent of the Oriental Museum of the Asiatic Society. Wallich also donated a number of botanical specimens to the museum from his personal collection. In 1815, Mr William Lloyd Gibbons, Asst Secretary and Librarian, was appointed Joint Secretary of the Museum.

After the resignation of Wallich, curators were paid salaries by the Asiatic Society ranging from Rs 50 to Rs 200 a month. However, in 1836, when the bankers of the Asiatic Society (Palmer and Company) became insolvent, the Government began to pay the salary of the Curator from its public funds since a large part of the collection was that of the surveyors of Survey of India.

References for records about Indian Museum Kolkata

Recommended Citation

Koehl, Dan (2024). Indian Museum Kolkata, Elephant Encyclopedia. Available online at https://www.elephant.se/location2.php?location_id=3192. (archived at the Wayback machine)

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