Shubha Banerji

Biography

Shubha has been serving as the Education Officer at the Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum (President House Museum), President Secretariat, since January 2017. She is responsible for educational and curatorial activities, collection management, and a wide range of art projects and cultural programs within the President’s House and the museum.

In 2023-2024, Shubha curated twelve enclaves in the Knowledge Gallery at the Presidential Retreat, Rashtrapati Nilayam, Hyderabad, showcasing the history, culture, and traditions associated with the President of India and the state of Telangana. She also revitalised an abandoned historic tunnel within the Presidential Estate, transforming it with Cheriyal folk art, a traditional dying art form of the state of Telengana. This unique project has since become a popular visitor attraction on the Nilayam circuit.

In 2025, Shubha co-curated the Artist-in-Residence programme “Kala Utsav 2025”, which invited folk artists from various parts of India to stay and work within the Presidential Palace, creating artworks that celebrate India’s diverse artistic heritage and foster dialogue between traditional art and contemporary museum practice.

At the Rashtrapati Bhavan Museum, Shubha has introduced several inclusive education projects designed to improve accessibility for visitors with disabilities and elderly audiences, ensuring that the museum experience is inclusive, engaging and participatory. She is currently engaged in intensive research on various aspects of the Presidential Palace, contributing to upcoming curatorial and interpretive projects.

Before joining Rashtrapati Bhavan, Shubha served as an Assistant Curator and later as a Consultant Curator at the National Museum in New Delhi, where she specialised in Pre-Columbian and Western art. There, she oversaw the digitisation of the Pre-Columbian collection under the Jatan Project, initiated by India’s Ministry of Culture, and contributed to the layout, texts, and labels for a new gallery.

Shubha also worked as a Project Coordinator at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), where she managed an archival project dedicated to cultural documentation. In addition, she has served as Guest Faculty in Museology at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, as well as at IGNCA.

Dr. Shubha earned her PhD in 2019 for her dissertation, “Cultural Resource Management of North Karanpura Valley, Jharkhand: An Ecomuseological Perspective“. Her research emphasises the protection and promotion of cultural heritage through community-based and museological approaches.

At the British Museum
During her time on the International Training Programme in 2014, Shubha was based in the Asia Department and her partner placement was spent at Manchester Art Gallery and Manchester Museum.

In 2014 participants were asked to prepare a project outlining an exhibition proposal based on the Asahi Shimbun Displays – a temporary exhibition in Room 3 at the British Museum.  Shubha’s exhibition project proposal was entitled Shell Bangles of Bengali: Shanka, Symbol and Society.

Shubha’s place on the International Training Programme was generously supported by the Charles Wallace India Trust.

Legacy Projects
In November 2015 Shubha attended the ITP Mumbai Workshop Creating Museums of World Stories. The workshop was held at CSMVS and was attended by many ITP fellows from different years and countries, UK partners and British Museum Colleagues.

In October 2016 Shubha was selected to attend the conference and workshop Learning, Engagement and Museums, hosted by Armenian ITP Fellows (Hayk Mkrtchyan, Davit Poghosyan and Marine Mkrtchyan), Ronan Brindley from UK partner Manchester Art Gallery and the ITP. The conference and workshop was help over four days Yerevan Armenia and was attended by 19 Armenian museum educators from 18 institutions, UK partner museum educators from Glasgow Museums, Manchester Art Gallery and The Collection and ITP fellow museum educators from Egypt, India, Lebanon and Turkey. Shubha presented a case study and took part in a working group.

ITP Newsletter Publications
ITP Newsletter Issue 3 (2016), Collections in focus: A celebration of death
ITP Newsletter Issue 7 (2020) Engaging with teachers and students: Museum-school partnerships in India