Following a July 2025 Tender Notification, an expert Jury consisting of museum directors from across the nation, selected Arcop Associates consortium as the winner of the world’s largest museum project unfolding in India. With credentials including the Academy of Motion Pictures Museum, Grand Rapids Art Museum and galleries at the Louvre, they offered the best combination of talent to price ratio that met the conservation architectural needs of the project. The Arcop team will be led by Thai-born Principal Architect Kulapat Yantrasast for a fast-paced initiative with a possible first-phase targeted opening in late 2026 or early 2027. Other shortlisted competitive bids from Knight Frank India and EcoFirst Services fell short. Combining North and South Blocks, the museum is part of the Central Vista project adjacent to Rashtrapathi Bhavan in Lutyen’s New Delhi. It will replace the tired National Museum that reflects poorly on every conceivable front – including interpretive curation, conservation, display, lighting, visitor experience and docent engagement for its priceless collection spanning 5,000 years. The new premise, with 950 galleries spanning a staggering 1,17,000 square meters, will have to undergo a large-scale adaptive re-use audit to meet the highest museum standards and best practices.
The scope, speed and scale alone will not determine the metric of the success for the Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum. It will blossom on the bedrock of fundamentals that would ultimately prevail through time and political troughs and crests, to emerge as a collective repository of India through the millennia. Times are changing. India is a highly progressive and aspirant economy capable of taking on complex challenges and experimenting with unexplored avenues. It also has the highest demographic of educated youth who are tech-savvy and multilingual. There is an increasing degree of imploring impatience with slow outcomes and slower returns on investment – be it business, entertainment, education or cultural experiences. The remarkable juxtaposition is that despite its agnostic objectivity to the nuts and bolts of survival, it is largely guided by faith and tradition that permeates most spheres of life. It is a living civilisation with festivals, a rich tapestry of rituals and centuries-old shrines and sanctuaries offering infinite wellsprings of hope and calm.
The challenges
Against this societal scape, the Yuge Yugeen Bharat Museum initiative faces five simple yet complex subjective and objective challenges ahead. The first assessment would include a comprehensive audit of adaptive use of heritage premises, consisting of the venerable North and South Block premises originally designed for administrative offices – vastly obtuse from the requirements of a world-class museum. Second, Curating Collections and Interpretive Content will require subject matter experts with a deep understanding of the Indian sub-continent through the millennia, with its rich living multi-ethnic, multilingual living traditions. India must set the bar high for its own museological frame of reference that is intrinsically different from the Western construct and approach towards museums. It therefore becomes critical for international teams working on this vital project to undergo an immersion training in understanding India. The team must undergo experiential sensitisation to the sacred spirit and spaces that define India’s Soul.
Third, the new museum offers an unprecedented opportunity to do something uniquely different, thinking beyond the usual flat graphics and glass cases. It is a moment in history which can break the archaic mould of the prescriptive definition of conventional museums. It is the Te papa moment for India to seize to manifest cultural identity in ways that no other museum has ever attempted to date. This approach would be its single most powerful calling card that would beckon people and professionals from across the globe to appreciate the experiential manifestation of an eternal edifice.
Next, metaphor, symbolism, iconography and light have been the lingua franca of culture across the vividly diverse, continental South Asia. This offers a palette of communication tools that can be both coded and decoded through tech-driven tools to the next level of museum exhibits. The endless possibilities of seamless layering must be explored beyond the lowest denominator often pursued for time and budgetary placations.
Lastly, the vastness of the collections and the depth of content can cause visitor fatigue to set in after the first flush of entering the museum. Large museums like the Louvre, de-Young, the Met, Grand Egyptian Museum, et al, have given this considerable thought and experimented with orientation geometry, resting and relief spaces, window vistas and exterior quadrangles to break the flow in conjunction with radial non-linear pathways with reverse and exit routes to avoid a labyrinth-like vertigo-inducing feel. Period heritage buildings come with their own restricted physical constraints. It is therefore important that the experience is memorable and invites a second visit, if not more.
The intangible magic of India’s unparalleled diversity is what brings its inclusive culture to life and makes the seemingly impossible, possible, even in times of turbulence and social dichotomy. The Yuge Yugeen Bharat has a responsibility to manifest an exhibit experience of what we often take for granted – India’s timeless Wisdom, its deep spiritual and scriptural roots, and the depth of its ability to welcome all in prayer, Peace – Vasudhaiva kutumbakam.
Dr. George Jacob FRCGS is an India-born Smithsonian-trained museologist, Commonwealth Scholar, author of books on the future of museum practice, and founding director of several award-winning museums.