We know the prime duty for the museum to document the past but also make it accessible for the present. Therefore, a museum as an institution holds the memory of the past! The purpose of this small piece of writing is not to set up the theoretical paradigms of the museum since collecting objects is the prime objective of any museums. Thus we can say museum as a "permanent memory store".
Since we started with the objects or collection and that is the main attraction of a museum. I want to take the opportunity to say about a remarkable collection of Indian art and archaeology at the Museum of Asian art in Berlin, Germany. Museum of Asian Arts evolves over the period since its initiation in 1873.
Like other European museums, there were several political insurgencies which put the collection of this museum at risk. The most severe blow was the second world war which destroyed a considerable amount of precious collection related to the silk route. Today Museum of Asian arts houses
approximates 20,000 objects from different parts of Asia, making it one of the largest and valuable museums of Asian art and archaeology.
My interest to visit the Museum of Asian Arts was more than its collection. I was keen to see what
makes the collection of the museum of Asian Arts different from other museums. As a scholarly interest, I am curious to know the person and background of any art or archaeological collection. Like many of us, silk route is a favourite topic as there is historical imagination is attached to it. We know the famous silk route collection of Sir Aurel Stein was distributed among the various institutions in India and the United Kingdom. But we mostly ignore the other side of the story of the German archaeologists who were collected a considerable amount of archaeological objects from the same area.
I have the opportunity to see the collections of Sir Aurel Stein spread across India and the United Kingdom. But I knew there is another repository of archaeological objects in Berlin. In 2015 I visited the
Museum of Asian Arts. Special permission was required to see the reserve collection from the silk route.
Here I must mention most of the German museums are very minimalistic in terms of their display. The galleries are arranged as a flowing narrative with support of minimum representative objects. But I was keen to see the collections from the silk route. The difference was clear and prominent. What Stein thought is essential to collect the German archaeologists did the opposite. There were massive differences in terms of types and composition of the object. Since objects tell stories, therefore, the story of silk route is incomplete without the collection of the Museum of Asian Art. The historical memory of the silk route is spread across the different museums, all these museums tie-up that memory in one thread.