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Bangladesh National Museum
preserves and displays the cultural property and
heritage, as well as specimens of natural history of
Bangladesh. Its mission is to establish a bridge between
the past and the present and uphold the national
tradition and culture. The museum itself has a history,
which began with the establishment of Dhaka Museum on 20
March 1913 with an annual government grant of Rs 2,000.
The Governor of Bengal,
lord carmichael,
formally inaugurated the museum on 7 August 1913 in a
room of the Secretariat Building (at present, the
dhaka medical
college and hospital).
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The plea for setting up a museum in
dhaka was first made in the
newspaper The
dhaka news on 1 November 1856. In
1909, a few coins were transferred from
Shillong to Dhaka, and a suitable place was
needed to preserve them.
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Bangladesh National
Museum, Dhaka
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H E Stapleton, a famous numismatist
made a proposal to Governor Sir Lancelot Hare on 1 March
1910 to establish a museum in Dhaka. Consequently, a
meeting of distinguished citizens of Dhaka was held on
25 July 1912 at
northbrook hall.
The establishment of the museum was formally approved by
the government and published in the official Gazette of
5 March 1913. A provisional General Committee of 30
members was constituted with Nicholas D Beatson-Bell,
Commissioner of Dhaka Division, as president. It was
authorised to appoint a provisional executive committee
to draft rules for the management of the museum. The
rules drawn up were approved by the government on 18
November 1913, and in accordance with these, a general
committee and an executive committee were formed. In the first meeting of the general
committee held on 3 March 1914, a decision was taken to
request the Bengal government for a grant of Rs 5,000 to
cover the development expenses of the museum for
1914-15. The first meeting of the executive committee
was held on 19 May 1914. At this meeting the draft
budget for the year 1914-15 was prepared and a decision
was taken to appoint a curator.
nalini kanta
bhattasali joined as the first curator of
Dhaka Museum on 6 July 1914, with a monthly salary of Rs
100. Although the museum was inaugurated on 7 August
1913, it was opened to the public on 25 August 1914,
with 379 objects on display. A total of 4,453 people
visited the museum in 1914-15; among them 143 were
female. Gradually, collections and activities
of the museum increased. The secretariat of the museum
was transferred to Baraduwari and Deuri at Nimtali (now
in the premises of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh) in
July 1915. In 1936, the government dissolved both the
general committee and the executive committee and a
9-member Dhaka Museum Committee was formed with the Vice
Chancellor of the
university of
dhaka as president and the curator of the
museum as secretary. Nalini Kanta Bhattasali died on 6
February 1947. Later, Professor Ahmed Hasan Dani,
Professor Abu Mohamed Habibullah, Professor Sirajul
Haque and Dr Mafizullah Kabir worked as part-time
honorary curators at different times. According to the
Dhaka Museum Ordinance, a board of trustees was formed
on 22 April 1970 and the museum became an autonomous
institution. The Bangladesh Jatiya Jadughar
(National Museum) Ordinance was promulgated on 20
September 1983 under which the Bangladesh Jatiya
Jadughar Board of Trustees has been constituted on 15
November 1983. The Bangladesh National Museum was
shifted to its present site at Shahbag on 17 November
1983. The four-storied building of the museum has 43
galleries on a total floor space of 238,000 square feet.
The galleries include: Bangladesh in maps; Rural
Bangladesh;
sundarbans;
rocks and minerals; plants; flowers,
fruits
and creepers; animals;
birds;
mammals;
elephant;
life in Bangladesh;
boats
of Bangladesh; tribes of Bangladesh-1; tribes of
Bangladesh-2; potteries; archaeological artifacts;
sculpture-1; sculpture-2; architecture; inscriptions;
coins, medals and
ornaments;
ivory works; arms and weapons; metal works; porcelain
and glassware; dolls; musical instruments;
textiles
and costumes; embroidered quilts; wood carvings-1;
wood carvings-2; manuscripts and documents; traditional
and miniature paintings; Shilpacharya
zainul abedin
Gallery; contemporary art-1; contemporary
art-2; eternal Bangladesh, portraits of national heroes,
historical documents and mementos of national heroes,
martyred intellectuals;
war of
liberation-1; War of Liberation-2; world
art-1; world art-2 and portraits of world personalities.
The museum has two auditoriums - one with 700 seats and
the other with 200 seats, a temporary exhibition hall
and office rooms for officers and the staff. By June 1998, the museum had
collected 82,475 objects. The most significant objects
are: ancient petrified wood (2.5 million years old)
collected from
lalmai
and
mainamati;
blackstone Naga Darwaza (serpent doorway) of
10th-11th century collected from Bangarh,
dinajpur;
pieces of atom bombs blasted in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
Japan in 1945; mat made of ivory; objects of the
Liberation War of Bangladesh; objects used by the
martyrs of the
language
movement;
muslin
of Dhaka; items of folk art and crafts; coins of
emperor Sher Shah; terracotta plaques; sculptures and
collection of contemporary art including various types
of statues. A large portion of the budget of the
museum comes from the government as grant. The sources
of the museum's own income include the rent collected
from the four auditoriums and other buildings and sale
of entry tickets. The director general is the chief
executive of the museum. It has four branch museums:
Osmany Museum at
sylhet;
ahsan manzil
Museum in Dhaka; Zia Smriti Museum in
chittagong,
and the Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin Sangrahashala at
mymensingh.
The number of foreign and local visitors at the museum
average 2,345 a day. For rural people, the museum
organised a Mobile Exhibition in 1979 with a
special bus containing a Mini Museum of 28 small
galleries.
 The objective of this programme was to make
the masses familiar with the culture and tradition of
Bangladesh. In 1976, the museum started the
school service programme that provided the students of
Dhaka city with the opportunity to visit the museum by
using its own transport. Under this programme, a total
of 24,013 student visitors visited the museum during
1996-97. According to the nature of objects
displayed, the museum is divided into four curatorial
departments. These are: Department of History and
Classical Art, Department of Ethnography and Decorative
Art, Department of Contemporary Art and World
Civilisation, and Department of Natural History. The
important objects under the supervision of the
Department of History and Classical Art include the
table on which the Instrument of Surrender was signed by
the Pakistan army on 16 December 1971; the first flag of
independent Bangladesh hoisted at foreign missions;
documents of the Liberation War of Bangladesh; torture
machines; The historic declaration of
bangabandhu
sheikh mujibur rahman delivered on 7 March
1971 in Dhaka; the bullet- ridden and blood-stained
shirt and shoes of Shaheed Shafiur Rahman, a martyr of
the language movement of 1952; personal mementos of
martyred intellectuals and Shaheed Asad; historical
mementos of
roquiah
sakhawat hossain,
michael
madhusudan dutt,
kazi nazrul
islam and
rabindranath
tagore; ancient blackstone, sandstone and
metal sculptures; coins of gold, silver and metal;
ancient inscriptions and manuscripts; terracotta
plaques; wooden sculpture; medals, royal decrees and
historic artworks; iron axes; archaeological artifacts
and objects of religious significance. Remarkable objects under the
supervision of the Department of Ethnography and
Decorative Art include muslin
sari;
decorative umbrella and sari; choga (a sort of
loose and long outer dress); achkan (kinkhab-
ceremonial dress); textiles; boats of Bangladesh;
weapons made of iron; cannons; nakada (war drum);
swords; filigree models; ivory works;
nakshi kantha
(embroidered quilt); plates and dishes of porcelain;
potteries; dolls; wood carvings; musical instruments;
ornaments worn by various tribes; dresses worn by
tribes; ornaments worn by women; fishing implements;
objects of household decoration; moulds of decorative
cakes; and strings of glass-beads. The important objects under the
Department of Contemporary Art and World Civilisation
include paintings and sculptures of Shilpacharya Zainul
Abedin, Quamrul Hasan and artist S M Sultan and artworks
and reproductions of works by renowned artists from home
and abroad; potteries burnt during the Second World War
in Hiroshima of Japan and various local and foreign
objects collected from Bangabhaban. Objects supervised by the Department
of Natural History include mapping of rocks, minerals
and population of Bangladesh; geological map of
Bangladesh; water colour paintings of rural Bangladesh;
stuffed Royal
bengal tiger
of the Sundarbans, chitral deer, honey
bee,
peafowl,
cattle
and birds, fruits and flowers, butterflies, pet animals,
marine mollusc, elephant, monkey,
langur
and the skeleton of a whale. Two other departments
are Conservation Laboratory and Department of Public
Education. The laboratory looks after the restoration of
museum objects using scientific methods. The Department
of Public Education conducts museum-related education
programmes for the public and students. This department
has seven sections: education, display, library,
publications, audio-visual, auditorium and photography.
The Department of Public Education organises seminars,
symposia, exhibitions, competitions and educational and
cultural functions |
