Special lectures and poster exhibition mark International Museum Day celebration by IGNCA

He and his team were excavating the ruins of the 1,250 years old Hindu temples of Bateshwar in Madhya Pradesh when they chanced upon a temple which they identified as a Shiva Temple.

Their belief was vindicated when he came across the statue of the bull.

“I saw a cute little Nandi and I felt as if they had been waiting for me for 1,200 years," he said.

Delivering an illustrated special lecture titled “Temple Conservation: Challenges in Chambal- A Story of Fallen Temples and Human Engineering” at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) to commemorate International Museum Day, KK Muhammed was talking about how difficult an archaeologist’s can be in light of his work at excavating the ruins of Bateshwar group of temples in Morena, near Gwalior.

Convincing the dreaded dacoits (bandits) of the Chambal valley of the importance of the temples, he even went to rope in some of them to help with his work, he said.
Of the 200 temples, 80 have been restored by the ASI, according to media reports.

IGNCA also unveiled an exhibition titled ‘Heritage Across the World’, which consisted of posters from UNESCO to celebrate the completion of 50 years of UNESCO, and India hosting the G20 summit for the year 2023.

Prof. Sanjay Jha, archivist and former Regional Director, Ranchi, Prof. Arun Bhardwaj, in-charge of Academic Unit, IGNCA, and Prof. Achal Pandya, head of the department, Conservation Division, IGNCA, were also present.

In his welcome address Prof. Sanjay Jha talked about UNESCO’s objectives to protect world cultural and natural heritage as well as about the 444 posters donated by the UNESCO Delhi office in 1992.

To celebrate the International Museum Day, the IGNCA Conservation lab had also organized a workshop on Conservation of Workshop Art to educate and raise awareness about the rich cultural properties of India.

The workshop was a part of the Museum Expo hosted in Pragati Maidan by the Union government.

According to a release by the organization, IGNCA has also been identified by UNESCO as the nodal agency for the development of regional databases for South and South East Asian countries on art, cultural heritage and lifestyles through the application of state-of-the-art technologies for standardization, exchange and dissemination of data.