No one wants to head India’s best museum

Earlier this year,a high-level search-and-selection committee — with the Cabinet Secretary,secretaries of culture and personnel and training,historian Barun De,Global Heritage Fund’s India director Kalpana Desai,and Columbia University art historian Vidya Dehejia on board — informally shortlisted five candidates,but finally decided none of them was eminent enough for the job.

The committee’s shortlist was based on relaxed criteria — any Masters degree and five years’ experience in running a museum of repute — aimed at attracting a larger pool of candidates,after the earlier criteria — including a Masters in history and longer administrative stints at museums — was deemed too tough.

In the committee’s view,the ideal candidate was Mahrukh Tarapor,the widely respected India-born museum professional who ended a celebrated 15-year association with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in March 2010. Tarapor is however,learnt to have declined the offer,citing international commitments and agreements.

The committee will now start the search again in about a month,putting out advertisements to invite new candidates.

National Museum’s problem — of mediocre candidates and a generally diminished interest in museum studies — is compounded by constraints imposed by the Union Public Service Commission which is supposed to fill vacancies,and the Central Public Works Department,whose maintenance of the premises has been less than satisfactory.

The Ministry of Culture is now looking to focus on strengthening the second tier in the museum’s administration. “There is a thinking in the Ministry that attention should be paid to second and third tier positions at the joint secretary/professor and director/reader levels respectively to keep things going,” said a top source.

The museum boasts over 200,000 works of exquisite art spanning 5,000 years of India’s cultural heritage,including nearly 1,000 artefacts from Harappan sites. The collections include works from pre-historic archeology,jewellery,paintings,decorative arts,manuscripts,central Asian antiquities and arms and armour.