Gurudwara - A Cultural Heritage-Open to Sky Museum

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The book is about a prospective New Museum: the Sikh heritage and sociocultural milieu preserved by the Gurudwara sacred complex in the format of Eco Museum/In situ museum based on community.

In the Eco-museum structure, the most significant point is people's participation in one's own heritage conservation, which is seen in the sacred complex of a Gurudwara. The present study has enabled us to get acquainted with all these socioreligio-cultural parameters of a Gurudwara of the Sikh community in clear terms.

The present study attempts to draw a parallel line between religio-cultural heritage (Gurudwara) and a museum. Role of Gurudwara and the Museum is similar. Both these are treasure troves of Indian cultural heritage.

This book will help readers to understand the concept of a New Museum/ New Museology through sacred heritage.

This is the best example of experimentation of a New Museum in the Indian context. Capturing the very context of a cultural environment has resulted in the New Museology movement.

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Harsha Rani, Muscologist by profession and a young author from Delhi. She is a German Language graduate from the University of Delhi, post graduated from National Museum Institute, New Delhi, and a trained Museum Conservator from NRLC, Lucknow, Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India.

She is working as an archivist with the Ministry of Culture, Govt of India. She is maintaining the single. largest Dance Collection of India, the Mohan Khokar Dance Collection (MKDC), KalaNidhi, IGNCA, MoC, India.

UGC NET/JRF Research Scholarship/fellowship awarded. Her research on the title: "Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage: possible role of museum.

She wishes to do intensive fieldwork and research, particularly in respect of culture and museums, and to spread her message, wherever she can. She engages in promoting and protecting the image of Indian culture and art in tangible and intangible aspects of it, as seen through museums or any other cultural institution.

Heritage studies are mostly concentrated in conventional museums so far but now it has proliferated into alternative institutions surrounding a community and its way of life - that has come up in recent time. At the present circumstances the object centric heritage institutions such as the conventional museums try to present human expression and behavior in a static manner. In fact the museum collection hardly represents the very background of the cultural materials on display in museum galleries. As a matter of fact an object does not present itself the holistic view of culture when it is seen in an out of the context environment. This has led to the rise of the alternative institutions which endeavors to bring in context of the heritage and thereby making the static objects meaningful. Capturing the very context of a cultural environment has resulted in the New Museology movement.

The Museum is a source of knowledge. It preserves an antique collection and disseminates information and knowledge about its collection to visitors. The type of museum is not only a conventional type museum, not only an object-centered museum. The basic role of the museum has changed into an educational institute. It is not a conventional educational institute, but it provides education along with pleasure and entertainment, simply we can say that a museum is a place for edutainment.

Development of the New Museum Theory

While considering the idea of public service, museums have come to acknowledge the fact that they are people centric, in course of time we are noticing more and more people-centric museums such as ecomuseums, community museums, neighbourhood museums, open to sky museums, and open-air museums, so on and so forth. These new developments gained popularity between the 1970s-1980s to be later called "New Museology". In 1971, Huges de Varine developed an idea about the museum, the idea of creating a museum, using local heritage and driven by local communities, to aid development. The concept was developed by Georges Henri Riviere much earlier.

**Contents and Sample Pages**