National Museum of Bangladesh

National Museum of Bangladesh

The National Museum of Bangladesh, located at Shahbag, Dhaka, is a four-storey building, with 46 galleries.  It was established on 20 March 1913, in those days called the Dhaka Museum.  It was formally inaugurated on 7 August 1913 by Thomas Gibson-Carmichael, 1st Baron Carmichael (1859-1926), Governor of Bengal. In July 1915 it was handed over to the Naib-Nazim of Dhaka.  It became the National Museum of Bangladesh on 17 November 1983.  The museum contains departments of ethnography and decorative art, history and classical art, natural history, and of contemporary and world civilisation. The museum also has a rich conservation laboratory. The first curator was Nalini Kanta Bhattasali (1888-1947), serving between  1914 and 1947.  He was a distinguished Indian historian, archaeologist, numismatist, epigraphist and antiquarian, specialising in the history of East Bengal.