Visit to Museum

We had interactions with our juniors from BIT Mesra, Ranchi and IIT BHU, Varanasi and have
enlisted the reasons stated by them for not visiting any museum in the last couple of months and
preferring other forms of entertainment to Museum. Both told us that they hadn’t visited a museum
not just in the last 2 months, but not even in the last 2 years.
In fact, they never really seemed to have cared about knowing about the museums in the city or
visiting one. However, they are quite aware of most malls in the city and are also aware of the movies
that are getting screened in the multiplexes in the city.
Reasons:
Not really interested in arts and history:
Both aren’t really interested in Indian or World history or arts and hence the visit to a museum is not
something that they would prefer over movies that they are interested in.
Not engaging experience:
The experience at a museum is not engaging. The junior from Ranchi told us that he had gone to
Science city in Kolkata last summer and found it engaging unlike most museums. He goes to park to
jog, malls to shop, multiplexes to grab a popcorn and watch a movie but the experience in a museum
is just viewing artifacts and reading the banners about each artifact. He says he might visit more often
if there was a tour guide or someone who would tell a story about each artifact in the museum.
Not appealing:
Another major reason stated by them is that museums in India aren’t posh and appealing unlike a
mall. They are awed by the architecture of malls and like to take selfies at multiple places in a mall
No eateries or few eateries:
A mall or movie hall or park have great eateries that provide great food. However, they hardly find
any good eateries in a museum.
No publicity:
They said they are unaware about the museums and are unaware if any new artifact gets added to a
museum because there is hardly any publicity for them unlike a new movie whose posters they get to
see in the streets, movie ads in TV, newspaper etc.
Not leveraging online and social media:
Also, they told us that these days they get to watch the trailer online, are updated about the release
date of movies online, books movie tickets online, but hardly get to know anything about museums
online. Also, fb pages of museums are not popular and aren’t very active.