Can’t decide where to go for date night? Try this massive museum in Mumbai

Its outer celadon green façade is unmissable as you pass by the Byculla zoo. Its offerings and artefacts have been a cornerstone of Mumbai’s cultural scene since its mammoth restoration in 2008. The Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai, formerly known as the Victoria & Albert Museum, was the first building in India to be built for the purpose of a museum when its construction began in 1862. “It is a quiet, beautiful, safe space of stories,” says Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, managing trustee and director of the museum, and previously the convener of INTACH’s Mumbai chapter that led that restoration project. “It’s the kind of place where you can slow down, have real conversations and discover something new about the world and about each other.”

After a two-and-a-half-year hiatus for post-Covid renovations, the museum reopened to the public this January with the exhibition Cartographies of the Unseen by Reena Saini Kallat (curated by Mehta) that explored the idea of man-made borders and the manipulation of nature. This was followed by Eckart Muthesius and Manik Bagh: Pioneering Modernism in India, curated by Raffael Dedo Gadebusch of the Asian Art Museum, Berlin. The museum is soon going to host exhibitions celebrating 100 years of the Art Deco movement, along with shows by Sameer Kulavoor (this November), Archana Hande (next January) and Himali Singh Soin.