Best Local Doll Art Spot in New Delhi - Colorful Doll Museum in Delhi

An amazing doll art museum also known as Shankar's International is located in the Children’s Book Trust of India Building in New Delhi. This doll museum in New Delhi was created by a popular political cartoonist, K. Pillai Shankar, who was born in 1902 and passed away in 1989. This museum not only displays the local doll art of Indian villages and towns but also has one of the greatest collections of dolls originating from different places in the world. Due to integration of different cultures and traditions combined by fine doll art from several regions of the world, this museum has become one of the best museums of dolls in the world.

Delhi’s DollMuseum covers an area of approximately 5000 square meters in the famous Children's Book Trust of India building on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in New Delhi. Besides being into the famous CBTBuilding, this museum has its own access and has a majestic staircase that leads to a huge lobby.

This famous museum is divided into 2 equal parts. One part showcases more than one hundred and sixty glass displays of dolls that goes up to 1000 feet long. Another section shows dolls from America, UK, Australia, Middle East, New Zealand, other countries in Asia, Africa, India, and many other European countries. A special place inside the museum is given to more than one hundred and fifty dolls dressed in authentic Indian costumes that display the local doll art of India. These dolls are built by the in-house dolls workshop located inside the museum by several doll artists around India.

The collections at the museum are enriched with the exchange of dolls from India to abroad. All dolls are made by hands without the use of any machine. The dolls made in the museum’s workshop are built after a thorough research of the physical attributes, jewelry, and clothing that characterizes each region in India and other countries of the world. It is interesting to note that the Golden Peacock Feather Award at Dolls Biennale was held in Cracow, Poland in 1980 and dolls from the museum of Delhi won the first prize at that occasion.

It is said that on the occasion of organizing the International Children’s Art Competition in 1949, the famous cartoonist, Shankar, received a gift from the Ambassador of Hungary to deliver a doll as a prize. He was so impressed of that that not only he delivered the doll as a prize, but the Hungarian doll was the first of the typical doll collection that began to be included in the Dolls Museum of Delhi since then.

Though Shankar is not alive now but his International Children’s Art Competition is still live in the hearts of children around the world because still Children’s Book Trust of India is organizing several art competitions like Shankar’s On-The-Spot Painting Competition which is open to children from all countries of the world who  are below the age of 16 years. The most important thing is that there is no entry fee for the competition and there are several gold medals and silver medals that can be won as prizes including The President of India’s Gold Medal for the best drawing or painting. These prizes not only raise the morale of kids but also help enhance creativity among the children’s of India and the world.

Now coming back to the doll’s museum, the idea of making a permanent museum for the dolls when the collection reached an amazing number of 500 members was of Nehru's daughter who was the Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi. The museum started with a collection of only 1000 dolls until 1987 but right now there is an amazing collection of more than 6500 dolls from eighty five countries around the world. This famous museum in Delhi is visited by many diplomats, prime ministers, and presidents of different countries.

So if you are a fan of watching not only the local art of India but also art in the form of dolls from different countries of the world, I recommend you to include this interesting museum in your itinerary to visit Delhi.