How have you seen museum learning evolve in the 21st century? Is there enough digital engagement being created globally?

There is a beautiful Tirthapata at CSMVS. You remember, the Shwetambara Jains hold five places as sacred that you are supposed to visit during your lifetime. Those who cannot travel right now can instead look at the Tirthapata depicting the five sites in order to do pilgrimage. Museums are like Tirthapatas, they make you travel to significant places — remote in space, and time — to learn and to be enlightened without moving.
In order to do that in a museum, you have to learn how to use it. And education in a museum does just that: it makes you discover not only a great number of ideas and objects and cultures different from those you are familiar with, it also gives you the know-how and tools to accomplish that journey and to get the most out of it, encountering other epochs and regions, and the works of great artists. In a museum, objects are key; they have the magic, presence and beauty that triggers new experience. But at the same time, you need text, labels and panels, audioguides and guided tours to learn more. You need all forms of contemporary learning — and museum educators are notoriously inventive people — to engage people of all ages, particularly children. Education transforms museums into extraordinary spaces of social interaction. And you need digital, the most potent and versatile technique we have, to communicate all this and to enrich, prepare and deepen your experience, inside and outside the museum.

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At the CSMVS and the BM, digital already plays an important role, and as the technique evolves so will the many uses the museum can make of it. There will always be more, there will never be enough. And at the museum, human beings and their encounters with inspiring objects and works will remain at the heart of all experience.

What are your thoughts on the newly-opened Children's Museum at CSMVS Mumbai?

It's a wonderful place! Situated on one side of CSMVS's beautiful garden, it is discreet and present at the same time, a little masterpiece of contemporary architecture. I like to look at the building, stand on its terrace among the branches of the mango tree, or sit on the benches underneath the grand baobab, and I like to look out from inside onto the garden and the main building.

It sets a new standard of how to welcome children to the museum and take them seriously. They have a lot to teach us about the world. The exhibition created by inspired young curators is a brilliant example.

Have growing cultural exchanges among museums of the world facilitated conservation practices?
Yes undoubtedly. And the fascinating CSMVS exhibition dedicated to the work of conservators and their endeavours to preserve the museum’s objects gives you a good impression right now of just how important the exchange has become. Conservators from our museums share skills and experiences of working with different material from different climes, they discuss methods and techniques and newest equipment, but also underlying principles and conservation philosophies to make sure they are up to date and do justice to the objects entrusted to them. This has grown into a truly international dialogue, with great institutions like the Getty Conservation Center in Los Angeles as supporters and facilitators on a global scale, partnering with museums and heritage institutions across the world. The CSMVS itself is setting a standard in developing conservation projects in partnership with other museums and cultural heritage institutions across India.

Best at the British Museum, London

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