One of Asia’s biggest museums on musical instruments will soon come up in Bengal. Mamata Banerjee and her delegation have tied up with Britain’s iconic Horniman Museum to set up a museum of musical instruments in Bengal.
Horniman has the world’s most exhaustive collection of instruments from across the world. It houses over 8,000 objects made to produce sound.
The oldest is a pair of bone clappers in the form of human hands made in Egypt around 3,500 years ago. Electric guitars and synthesizers are among the most recently acquired.
Bengal Finance Minister Dr Amit Mitra said on Wednesday they “discussed the plan to set up a musical instrument in Kolkata. This museum will house a large collection of musical instruments from Bengal. The state’s efforts to pre serve folk art and its musical instruments in Bengal were shared with the museum. The musical instruments gallery at Biswa Bangla Haat in Rajarhat could be the starting point of this collaboration.”
Image: Horniman Museum in London (source)