With the introduction of the new virtual facility, the state museum housed in Lucknow’s Nawab Wajid Ali Shah Zoological Garden will now be made available to the audience online. In the first phase of this project, the virtual tours would be started for the ‘white house’ part of the main museum which is also called ‘foreign sculptural museum’. This latest development would take the historical museum to people’s homes, allowing them access at just the click of a button.
Figurines & sculptures sourced from different regions across the state
T director of the State Museum was quoted as saying, “It has been a learning phase for all of us as pandemic has taught us to make use of technology. Hence, we are going to start holding virtual tours. Initially, this facility would be only for the sculptor museum and not the main museum.”Standing on the posterior part of the huge building, the state museum’s wing is a small hall that displays figurines and sculptures sourced from different regions across the state.
Queen Victoria’s life-size statues, one of the most admired attractions
The wing, completely shrouded in white, contains about 2 dozen relics and artefacts from British colonial times. It houses the tall bronze statues of Queen Victoria who was proclaimed the Empress of India after the revolt of 1857. The most ornamented of all artefacts is the statue sourced from Prayagraj which is draped in a long gown with a tightly fitted bodice. The figurine represents the queen holding a piece of crowning regalia in her left hand and a sceptre in the right that points downwards.
Queen Victoria’s bust, crafted from single-piece marble which is one of the most loved sculptures in the museum has also been brought from Allahabad. Among other fascinating attractions of the museum are the statues of George V sourced from Deoria, a one-piece marble figure of Sir John Woodburn who served as the governor of Bengal and Awadh from 1843 to 1902 and many more. The director also mentioned that the statues made from iron are depreciating in their appearance with each passing day. While they were initially left in the open for a long time, the construction of the hall in 2006 has been a step towards preservation.
Virtual tours to bring back the museum’s lost glory!
Once a popular tourist attraction, the state museum lost its audience significantly due to the pandemic. This move of organising virtual tours, however, will bring back people’s attention to the museum once again. Are you ready to be transported back to colonial times?
