Albert Hall Museum, Jaipur

The museum is housed inside the Albert Hall’s complex. The foundation of Albert Hall was laid by the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward in 1876. The building was completed in the year 1887 by the architect, Samuel Swinton Jacob. The museum collection is spread across ground and first floor and is divided under fifteen categories namely metal art, pottery, jewellery, garments & textiles, arms & armour, miniature paintings, musical instruments, clay art, sculptures, marble art, furniture & wooden art, carpet, international art, ivory, and coins.

Metal art collection includes everyday utility objects from the 19th century. The collection of arms and armour include swords, hilts, tiger knives, helmets, javelins, bows and arrows. 4th to 10th century sculptures including Shiva, Bodhisatva, Ravananugrah Murthi are on display on the ground floor. The jewellery gallery contains ornaments worn by peasants as well as the elites in the 19th century Jaipur; garments and textile gallery houses old sanganeri prints, kotadoria, bandhish work, gota work, embroidery, and lace. The Egyptian mummy from 322-30 B.C., Pharaonic antiquities from 11th-1st century B.C are part of the international art collection. The vintage pottery masterpieces from Britain, Iran, Turkey, and Japan are part of the pottery collection. Marble art gallery includes sculptures carved by Jaipur artisans during the 19th century. The carpet collection displays carpets also from the 19th century.

The History of the Museum
When the foundation stone of Albert Hall was laid during the visit of the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward to Jaipur in 1876, it had yet to be determined what use it would be put to. There were some suggestions about cultural or educational use or as a town hall. However in 1880 Maharaja Sawai Madho Singh II approved a suggestion by Dr. Thomas Holbein Hendley, Resident Surgeon (whose interests extended beyond his medical responsibilities) to open a museum of Industrial Arts to display products of local craftsmen. A small museum was created in 1881 in temporary accommodation and proved most popular. Additionally, Hendley in 1883 mounted a Jaipur Exhibition at Naya Mahal (old Vidhan Sabha).

The Albert Hall was completed in 1887 by the architect Samuel Swinton Jacob,Director of Jaipur PWD. The temporary museum and the exhibition whose artifacts had been collected from several parts of India and its neighbourhood were merged and shifted to their permanent home in the new museum. The building itself became an integral part of the display, its Indo-Saracenic architecture and stone ornamentation, became a source of reference for varied classical Indian styles of design from Mughal to Rajput. Even the corridors were decorated with murals in a variety of styles including the Ramayan, reproducing paintings from illustrations in the Persian Razmnama prepared for Emperor Akbar. European, Egyptian, Chinese, Greek and Babylonian civilizations were portrayed in the other murals to enable the people of the region to compare and contrast them with their own and develop their knowledge of history and art.

Confronting the gates of the city by 1890 there stood the museum, the zoo and the Mayo Hospital in a public park representing the dream of the former Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh which was realized by his successor Sawai Madho Singh which showed the new face of a Jaipur moving into the modern age.