Gurusaday Museum in Kolkata

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Establishment of Gurusaday Museum in Kolkata is pioneered by Sri Gurusaday Dutta, a civil servant who worked as a district collector during the time of British rule. With the vision to encourage Bengal art, the museum preserves and exhibits the rare collection of Bengal's craftsmanship. Pined by the sight of the miserable situation of the poor craftsmen, Sri Gurusaday Dutta stepped in to revitalize the disappearing masterpieces of folk art of undivided Bengal.

Sri Gurusaday started collecting the exquisite artistic specimens of rustic Bengal between the year 1929 and 1939. After his death in 1941 the invaluable collection was handed over by the Bengal Bratachari Society. The collection of Sri Gurusaday accounted to as many as 2325 items of art in total. In 1961, the museum building was opened by the then Chief Minister of Bengal, Dr. Bidhan Chandra Ray and it was inaugurated for public view on 8th February, 1963 by Professor Humayun Kabir who was then the Union Ministry of Education of India.

The Gurusaday museum is located at Diamond Harbor that is few kilometers away from Kolkata. At present there are as many as 3300 handicrafts some of which some are unique pieces of heirloom. Inside the museum you will be instantly transferred into the realm of aesthetic assimilation of the rich culture, the religious approach, the rural ethnicity manifesting the society of tradition and present Bengal. The following are the features related to the Gurusaday Museum in Kolkata.

• In the museum you will come across spellbinding pieces of paintings that date back to 17th and 18th centuries. The famous Kalighat paintings, Dhokra crafts, the patachitras, terracotta works and ingenious Jamdani and Tangail sarees. The Bengal's famous Kantha stitch artistry and wooden sculptures, potteries and clay idols of exclusive designs.
• There is a separate workshop where repairing works like fumigation, de-acidification, manuscript lamination and rare books binding are carried out by experts on a regular basis.
• Students and researchers can avail the facility of studying in a library that stocks books revealing the true story of the development of Bengal art.
• Rare articles are rotationally exhibited. The rotational form of exhibition was introduced in the year 1984.

Due to shortage of space only one fifth of the total collection of articles are displayed at a time. The National Cultural Fund has been contributed by the Department of Culture, Government of India and Development Commissioner (Handicrafts) in order to build the Annex building of the museum. The building is on the process of its completion and soon the entire collection of artifacts is to be displayed to thronging visitors.