Museum · Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Government Museum, Chennai
Started in 1851, the second-oldest museum in India, spread over six buildings in Egmore. Its bronzes and its sculpture from the Amaravati stupa are the reasons to go.
See first
- The Bronze Gallery: Chola Nataraja and Ardhanarishvara
- Sculpture from the Amaravati stupa
- The National Art Gallery and Raja Ravi Varma
- The Museum Theatre
The museum started with rocks: 1,100 geological specimens given to the government by the Madras Literary Society in 1851. It opened in Nungambakkam and moved to its present site in Egmore in 1854. The complex now covers about 16 acres, with six buildings and 46 galleries, and includes the National Art Gallery and the Connemara Public Library.
The Bronze Gallery is the one most people come for, and rightly. Its Chola bronzes include several figures of Shiva as Nataraja, the dancer, and an Ardhanarishvara, Shiva as half man and half woman, which visitors and guidebooks single out. Give it time; the casting rewards a close look.
The other great holding is from Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh. In 1845 Sir Walter Elliot excavated at the Buddhist stupa there and sent many of the carved limestone panels to Madras. Some went on to London in 1859; more stayed. The largest groups are now here and at the British Museum.
The Museum Theatre, in an Italianate style, still hosts plays.