Auditoriums & institutions
The Museum established in 1949 have on display paintings, coins, porcelatin objects, metal and ivory toys, artifacts, woodcarvings and number of miscellanecous items like needlework and local handicrafts.
State museum devoted to archaeology puts on views antiquities like coins, sculpture, terracotta excavated from all the important sites of the region. Paintings and handicrafts, especially those made by the tribal communities of Bastar, are on display, too.
India – Madhya Pradesh – Bhopal – Bhopal Archaeological Museum
Bhopal Archaeological Museum
The Archaeological Museum in Bhopal houses a splendid collection of sculptures brought from various parts of the state. Madhya Pradesh is situated at the very heart of India, and its rich cultural heritage often leaves visitors spellbound.
The museum in Bhopal provides a small sample of the rich traditions of the state. Highlights of the collection on display here are paintings of various schools, copies of paintings from the Bagh caves at Mandu, and statues of Lakshmi, the Hindu Goddess of Wealth, and of the Buddha.
Further, you will find images of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, the Hindu Holy Trinity of Creator-Preserver-Destroyer of the Universe.
There is also an image of Shiva seated with his consort Parvati, and a fine carving of an amorous couple from Khajuraho, which is the home of erotic sculptures and paintings in Madhya Pradesh.
Also, in the museum are as many as 87 Jain bronzes culled from a single site in Dhar, dating back to the 12th century Paramara Dynasty.
All in all, the museum contains an array of paintings, statues, figurines, tribal handicrafts and musical instruments, illustrating the rich cultural history of the state.
The Birla Museum displays the varied aspects of Madhya Pradesh’s rich cultural and historical heritage. The objects on view date from the prehistorical period onwards. There are palaeolithic and Neolithic tools and implements, a scale model of the Bhimbetka rock shelter with its prehistoric wall paintings. On view are also stone sculpture dating from the 7th to 13th century from the state’s numerous archaeological sites, terracotta dating from the 2nd century BC to the 6th century AD, coins and manuscripts.
Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (A Post Colonial Museum):
The Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Manav Sangrahalaya (National Museum of Mankind) is a unique Museum, on the Shamla Hills on the Upper Lake front. It is a postcolonial museum of communities rather than objects. A road leading to Van Vihar branches off uphill to Manav Sangrahalaya – an anthropological institution housing a vast repertoire of tribal and folk arts from across India. Situated on the hill by the side of the Upper Lake, surprisingly an entire fishing village has been replicated towards the lakeside with a black, sleek snake boat from Kerala catching immediate attention. Even its shelter has been designed in an ethnic fashion. Most of it is now covered in wild grass medicinal plants used by the tribals in traditional system of medicine. It is a unique museum spread over 200 acres of undulating land, situated in a prehistoric site and may be the only museum in the world strewn with numerous prehistoric painted rock shelters. It is engaged in recollection rather than collection. This has been curated directly by the folk and tribal communities, camping at site, to create a miniature presentation of Indian folk ways through display of ecospecific habitations and subsistence practices in the tribal, coastal, desert, and Himalayan habitats. The tribals themselves built a hilltop village resembling a tribal hamlet with each shack unique to a tribe from one part of the country or the other with original material. This part of the museum has been put together painstakingly over the years by inviting one tribe at a time. The library, audio-visual archive, computerized documentation and the collection of ethnographic specimens in the Museum, though modest in size are among the best in the world.
It is situated on the Shamla Hills on the Upper Lake front.
Regional Science Centre
Basically a science museum, located on the picturesque Shamla Hills, this centre houses about 300 participatory exhibits distributed equally in ‘Invention’ & ‘Fun Science’ galleries, and a ‘Taranmandal’ (Planetarium).
From 10.30 am to 6.30 pm on all days except Mondays.
About Tribal Habitat (Museum of Man):
The Tribal Habitat, an open-air exhibition on Shamla Hills provides a picture of the tribal cultures of India. It is a presentation of actual-size dwellings typical of contemporary tribal cultures in various states of India.
Open every day except on Mondays and national holidays, from 10 am to 6 pm. Architectural features are presented with elaborately displayed interiors with the matching surroundings reconstructed to match some of the interesting environmental features of tribal villages. The surroundings have been reconstructed to match some of the interesting environmental features of tribal villages.
Kabad Khana, Jumerati, Phone: 0755-2535373
Zone I, M P Nagar, Phone: 0755-4277677, 2768680
Near Indore Bus Stand, Hamidia Road, Phone: 0755-2537152
Near Shakir Hospital, Hamidia Road, Phone: 0755-3291921
Hoshangabad Road, Near Habib Ganj Rly Station, M P Nagar,
New Market, Phone: 0755-2774029, 2464948
Near Overbridge Bhopal, Hamidia Road, Phone: 0755-2741800
Rang Mahal Cinema
Bhadbadha Road, New Market, Phone: 0755-2774027, 2774028
Nr Raj Talkies, Jahangirabad, Phone: 0755-2715290
Near Railway Station Chandparav, Bajragaeg,
Phone: 0755-2737073, 3254200