The Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH) was founded at the initiative of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905. Built on a 57-acre land it is recognised as the finest specimen of Indo-British architecture in India. The VMH had its foundation stone laid by the Prince of Wales in 1906 and formally opened to the public in 1921. It was declared an institution of National importance by the Government of India Act of 1935. It is the most-visited museum in India and one of the top museums in the world in terms of footfall, with 20 lakh people visiting its galleries and more than 13 lakh people touring the gardens separately in 2013-14.

The Victoria Memorial Act of 1903 declared it a ‘Memorial of the Life Reign of Her late Majesty Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Empress of India.’ Over the subsequent decades, it evolved into a period museum focusing on Indian history during 1650-1947.

The Memorial is under the ‘administrative control’ of the Ministry of Culture, Department of Culture, Government of India. Victoria Memorial is an autonomous organisation and is governed by the Board of Trustees with H.E. the Governor of West Bengal as the Chairperson. The Secretary and Curator functions as the Chief Executive and as the Secretary to the Board of Trustees. The VMH receives an annual grant from the Ministry of Culture for its Plan and Non-Plan heads of expenditure. In addition, it generates its own revenue through the sale of admission tickets to the gardens and galleries.

About the collection: The VMH has nine galleries. The gallery to be introduced most recently is the Calcutta Gallery, installed in 1992.
The others are:
• Entrance Hall Gallery – houses the ‘Making of the VMH’ exhibition
• Portrait Gallery – used for temporary exhibitions
• Royal Gallery – has large oil paintings, including the ‘Jaipur Procession,’ the third largest oil painting in the world.
• Queen’s Hall – has busts and statues, miscellaneous Victorian relics, arms and armour, etc.
• Durbar Hall – houses oil paintings of the Company School of Art, depicting Indian peoples and landscapes during 1750-1900.
• Calcutta Gallery – depicts the historical evolution of the city of Calcutta/Kolkata over the last three centuries
• Princess Hall – has arms and armour, and technological objects of British colonial power in India
• National Leaders Gallery – has portraits of the leaders of the Indian nationalist movement
• Indian Artists Gallery – houses paintings by Indian artists in the period 1880-1960

As a museum, the VMH collection has 28,394 artefacts displayed in nine galleries that encapsulate the history of India extending over three centuries beginning from 1650 A.D. The collection includes paintings in oil and watercolour, sketches and drawings, aquatints, lithographs, photographs, rare books and manuscripts, stamps and postal stationery, coins and medals, arms and armour, sculptures, costumes, personal relics and other miscellaneous archival documents.

The highlights of the collection are paintings by major European artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Thomas and William Daniell, Johann Zoffany, Joshua Reynolds, William Hodges, Tilly Kettle, Baltazar Solvyns, Charles D’Oyly, Emily Eden, and Samuel Davis. In the collection of the Memorial is the third largest painting on a single canvas, the Russian artist Vassili Verestchagin’s The State Procession of the Prince of Wales into Jaipur in 1876. Other important and interesting artefacts in the collection of the Memorial include historic illustrated Persian manuscripts like the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s hand-written Quran, the Persian translation of the tale of Nala and Damayanti by Abul Faiz Faizi, Dara Shikoh’s translation of the Upanishads, a manuscript copy of the Ain-i-Akbari, Kalighat paintings, Iranian paintings of the Qajar school, Tipu Sultan’s personal war diary, cannons and cannon balls used in the battle of Plassey, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s personal sword, and Taya Tope’s overcoat.

Along with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the VMH is the best collection of artefacts relating to Indo-British history from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It also the best repository in the world of visual material related to Calcutta / Kolkata.

The VMH has the largest collection in the world of paintings on eighteenth-century India by the famous uncle-and-nephew duo, Thomas and William Daniell.

Very recently, the VMH collection has been further enriched by the acquisition, on enduring loan from Rabindra Bharati Society, of nearly 5,000 paintings of the Bengal School of Art, especially many prominent works of Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Jamini Roy and others.