The Museum of Material Memory is a crowdsourced digital repository of material culture of the Indian subcontinent, tracing family histories and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity. It was co-founded in 2017 by Aanchal Malhotra and Navdha Malhotra. Its premise is to promote the preservation of memory infused within personal objects, recognizing them as a significant resource in understanding culture and civilization. The objects in the Archive are from or before the 1970s.
By exploring the notion of the collected or preserved object from a certain moment in time, we can attempt to gather insight into the moment of time itself. Using the object as nucleus, the project is populated with contributions from the Indian subcontinent and its diaspora. Through storytelling, each post on the Archive reveals not just a history of objects and the people they belong to, but also unfolds generational narratives about their traditions, culture, customs, conventions, habits, languages, society, geography and history.
Since its inception, the Museum has collaborated with local and international creative organisations through panels, curating online and offline content, and brand partnerships.
