Organization - Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya(IGRMS)

The aims and objects of Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya are:

• To present an integrated story of the Evolution of man and culture with special reference to India
• To highlight the richness and diversity of Cultural patterns in India and its underlying unity
• To promote national integration
• To organise Indoor and Outdoor Exhibitions on: (a) Human Evolution and Human Variation, (b) Culture and Society in Pre and Proto-historic times, and (c) Patterns of Culture
• To take steps to salvage and preserve the fast vanishing aspect of the Indian Culture
• To promote and conduct research in the related subjects and provide funds and enter into arrangements with other similar institutions for the purpose of furtherance of the objectives of the Samiti
• To act as a centre of research and training in museology of the appropriate kind and generate in the course of time a new museum movement in the different regions of India to present and preserve variety of cultural life, and
• To undertake all such activities as and when considered necessary for the achievement of the said objectives.

Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (IGRMS)/ (National Museum of Mankind), an autonomous organization of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India is engaged to portray the story of mankind in time and space, conceived in the early 1970s, the IGRMS began its activities in 1977 by opening a nucleus office at New Delhi. The establishment was shifted to Bhopal in early 1979 on allotment of necessary land for developing the Museum. The main Museum of the IGRMS is being developed in a 200 acre campus allotted by the State Government of Madhaya Pradesh in front of the famous Bhopal lake. A Southern Regional Centre of IGRMS is functioning since 2001 at Mysore from a heritage building ‘Wellington House’ allotted by the Government of Karnataka.

The Sangrahalaya is involved in generating a new Museum movement in India, to demonstrate the simultaneous validity of human cultures and the plurality of alternatives for human articulation. The Sangrahalaya is also working for national integration, and promote research and training and inter-organizational networking for salvage and revitalisation of vanishing, but valuable cultural traditions. The innovative aspects of the organisation are its open air and indoor exhibitions, built with active involvement of traditional artisans and experts drawn from different community group and the Education, Outreach and Salvage activities for revitalization of vanishing but valuable cultural traditions.

Through its exhibitions and salvage activities, the IGRMS demonstrates the aesthetic qualities of India’s traditional life styles, and the continued relevance of the local knowledge and mores of its people to the modern society, and cautions the people against unprecedented destruction of ecology and environment, local values and customs.

The Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya, Bhopal is predominantly an open air museum dedicated for the conservation, preservation and dissemination of the vanishing but valuable aspects of culture through its exhibitions,  programmes and activities across the country including North-East. There are 10 open air exhibitions and 1 indoor museum with 12 thematic galleries. It organises its programmes and activities under three sub-schemes:

1. Infrastructure Development; IGRMS has a huge campus of nearly 200 acres of undulated land in which it makes systematic efforts for development of open air exhibitions with active participation of communities, make the environment visitor friendly by adding new exhibits which are either unique in their architecture or an example of indigenous architecture knowledge and also create new exhibition to enable masses to understand the cultural variation of Indian communities besides it also make special provisions for the special groups like People With Disabilities/ visually impaired etc.
2. Education and Outreach Activities: IGRMS has understood its role as a cultural institution and also as a centre of learning and therefore it has categorized its programmes and activities under a major sub scheme education and outreach which includes travelling/periodical exhibitions, “Do and Learn” museum education programmes (based on training of traditional and creative art forms), artists camps for the promotion of folk and tribal artists and the respective craft forms, museum popular lectures by the imminent scholars for students, researchers and general visitors, seminars on various topics related to Anthropology/Museology/Archeology/Sociology etc. Programmes of Performing art presentations for dissemination of various aspects of intangible cultural heritage as also for strengthening national integration. In addition it also brings out research publications including Annual Journal of Humankind and organizes special events on various occasions to create awareness on the relevance of particular occasion. This includes observance of World Environment Day, Heritage Day, Yoga Day, International Museum Day, Children Day, Women Day, World indigenous Peoples Day, Disabled Day etc. It is to be noted that within last two decades IGRMS has made a tremendous efforts in initiation and strengthening of new museum movement in the country. It has not stressed on museumisation of objects but has been sincerely engaged in demuseumising and revitalization of objects and traditions in respective areas.
3. Operation Salvage-The operation salvage sub scheme of IGRMS aims on salvaging the valuable but vanishing aspects of culture through every possible steps. Although salvage through collection and field work are two major activities through which the IGRMS makes attempt to enrich its collection of material culture objects as also  of the archival material. The officials of IGRMS especially curatorial staff with support of technical staff carryout field works in remote areas of the country for documentation of rare events as also day to day life of people in different climatic zone and their culture.

• Website:http://igrms.gov.in, igrms.com
• Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/igrms.bhopal
• YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/user/igrms
• Twitter:https://twitter.com/igrms(@igrms)
• Blogs:http://igrms.com/museum_speaks.html, http://igrms.blogspot.in/2010/06/national-museum-of-mankind.html