International Museum Day marked in Lalitpur

By A Staff Reporter.Lalitpur, May 19: The Lalitpur Metropolitan City’s Industry, Tourism and Culture Conservation Committee in association with the Patan Museum Development Committee and the Jyapu Museum organised a programme on the eve of International Museum Day.

Attended by Lalitpur’s Mayor Chiri Babu Maharjan, Director General of the Department of Archaeology Damodar Gautam, experts and stakeholders, the programme, held at Patan Museum on Wednesday, discussed the need and relevance of museums and the conservation of heritage and monuments in the country.

Mayor Maharjan highlighted the role museums could play in the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. 

He also praised Patan Museum as one of the finest museums in South East Asia and expressed his metro’s commitment to supporting its sustainability. 

He also talked about the repatriation of stolen heritage and said that the city had prioritised the reinstatement of returned monuments to their places of origin.

Maharjan further informed that the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation had approved Lalitpur’s plan to turn the Bhandarkhal section of the Patan Museum into an archaeological garden and that the project would be included in the metro’s budget for the fiscal year 2023/24. 

The garden was an idea first proposed by the late centenarian Satya Mohan Joshi.

International Museum Day is an international day held annually on or around May 18 and is coordinated by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). This year, the day is being celebrated on Thursday with the theme ‘Museums, Sustainability and Well-being’.