Fossils, smugglers, coin machines, rare gems, revolutionaries and so much more to see as a slew of museums open across
Fossils, smugglers, coin machines, rare gems, revolutionaries and so much more to see as a slew of museums open across the country, reports Tanisha Saxena.
A view inside Joint Replacement Museum in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The non-profit Indian Society of Hip and Knee Surgeons opened India’s first arthroplasty museum this year. Some 200 exhibits, dating from the 1970s onward, chart how the field has evolved. Drop in to learn about complicated case studies and best practices. (Picture courtesy: Joint Replacement Museum)
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A view of Mandro Fossil Park at Rajmahal Hills in Jharkhand. Here, stones play out Earth's history. The 95-acre forested zone has fossils that are 145 to 200 million years old. The central attraction: a 140-million-year-old plant fossil, preserved in a giant boulder, that might be the key to understanding how early plants evolved into the ones we know today. (Picture courtesy: Mandro Fossil Park)
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Dharohar GST Museum in Panaji, Goa. India’s only museum dedicated to custom duties, trade taxation and GST has a Battle of Wits gallery which chronicles how gold, guns, drugs, antiquities and wildlife were seized from smugglers over the decades. A new gallery charts the two-decade journey of GST. On display: The actual buzzer used in Parliament when the GST bill was turned into law. (Picture courtesy: Dharohar GST Museum)
A visitor at the Museum of Possibilities in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Dedicated to the differently and specially abled, this museum has a café with counters at varying heights and suction-cup crockery for those who need it. The toilets are wheelchair-enabled. The Live, Work, Play sections feature musical instruments, boardgames, literature and software adapted for the differently abled. Check out the tactile surfaces for the visually challenged, beds and shelves at wheelchair-enabled levels, remote-controlled and voice-activated devices, sliding doors for greater ease. (Picture courtesy: Museum of Possibilities)
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A view inside Museo Camera in Gurugram, Haryana. Check out their collection of more than 2,500 cameras and photographic equipment from the 1850s onward. Also displayed are rare pictures from Partition and an ongoing group show in which contemporary photographers mark 75 years of India's independence. If you love photography, this is a peek into what happens behind the scenes. (Sanjeev Verma / HT Photo)
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Modus Vivendi (1000 people – 1000 Homes), 2000: In this self-portrait, a work of mixed media on canvas, Kallat appears as a swaggering, bespectacled juggler of heart and brain. The painting is an exploration of selfhood in the city of Mumbai, where he grew up and lives. The individual, lost in the multitudes, wanders in a state of perpetual disorientation, as reflected in the work. The radiating streaks of red, orange and green, reminiscent of thermal imagery, were achieved by texturing the canvas with layers of paint or canvas and then peeling off some parts to attain the desired visual effect.
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Sheer delight: While out surveying the remote Phoenix Islands Archipelago, Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists captured rare footage of a “glass octopus”, named so because it is completely see-through. What one does see when one shines a light on it is its optic nerve, eyeballs, and digestive tract. Even though this species has been known to science since 1918, scientists were forced to study about this animal through specimens found in the guts of predators, before this sighting.
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Herald / Harbinger is a permanent public art installation by Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp. It broadcasts the sounds of the Bow Glacier cracking and breaking 200 km away, to the centre of Calgary, one of Canada’s largest cities, almost in real time. The sounds and imagery shaped by data from a glacial observatory are broadcast through 16 speakers and seven LED arrays.
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Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): The movie explores the many dimensions of parenthood and love through the story of a Chinese-American immigrant named Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while struggling to run a failing laundromat business, uses her newfound powers to travel across multiple realities to save the world and work on her strained relationships with her loved ones. It’s a family drama that’s fast-paced, funny and, above all, tackles earnestly the idea of healing from intergenerational trauma.
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At first sight: For centuries, sunspots were thought to be Mercury passing across the Sun. By the early 17th century, with the invention of the telescope, astronomers could get a clearer look. In 1610, Galileo Galilei (who first used the telescope to observe space) in Italy and his British contemporary Thomas Harriot identified these as spots on the Sun. Seen here are 35 drawings of sunspots created by Galileo between June 2 and July 8, 1612.
