India's Oldest Museum, Built for Empire and Kept After It

The Indian Museum was founded in 1814 under the Asiatic Society of Bengal, making it the oldest museum in India and among the oldest in Asia, and it moved into its present Chowringhee Road building, a grand colonial-era structure in central Kolkata, in 1875. Its founding purpose combined scientific and colonial administrative interests typical of the period, cataloguing the natural history, archaeology and ethnography of British India in one institution, and its collections grew heavily through nineteenth and early twentieth century excavation and survey work carried out under colonial administration across the subcontinent.

After Indian independence the museum was retained rather than dismantled or repurposed, transferring to the administration of independent India's Ministry of Culture as one of a small number of museums under direct national rather than state control. Its archaeology holdings, built during the colonial period, became part of the new nation's own heritage infrastructure without a change of building or much change of collection, a continuity that distinguishes it from newer institutions such as the National Museum in New Delhi, founded after independence specifically as a national showcase.