Vaidehi Savnal

Vaidehi Savnal is curator of education and public programmes at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) in Mumbai, where she leads the museum’s learning, outreach, and audience engagement initiatives.

CSMVS is one of India's leading art and history museums, dedicated to fostering awareness and appreciation of its rich heritage through a visitor-friendly space for education, study, and public enjoyment.

Savnal leads the institution’s Children’s Museum, Mumbai’s first-ever children’s museum and creative centre. This ‘creative cultural lab’ promotes discovery, innovation, and creativity through diverse spaces, including an exhibition hall, amphitheatre, activity plaza, open terrace, and an ‘adda’ space around a Baobab tree, all set amid lush surroundings with a gardening patch and mock excavation trench.

She also develops outreach projects such as the Museum on Wheels, in which two large buses tour exhibitions that draw from the CSMVS’s vast collection of antiquities. This enables the Museum to reach audiences beyond its walls, extending into the farthest areas of suburban Mumbai, into the state of Maharashtra and beyond.

The buses are fully equipped with display cases, AV equipment, digital media, interactive demo-kits, and arts and crafts activities that provide children with a holistic learning experience.

Savnal also serves as Core Faculty for the Postgraduate Diploma in Museology and Conservation, affiliated with the University of Mumbai. This one-year course aims to critically and creatively mentor prospective museum professionals.

As a curator, Savnal has developed both independent and collaborative exhibitions with partners such as the British Museum, the Getty Foundation, the British Library, and the Rijksmuseum. Her portfolio includes the co-curation of major shows such as Traversing Tibet: Through the Lens of Li Gotami; and Ancient Sculptures: India Egypt Assyria Greece Rome.

Savnal has delivered a TEDx talk exploring narratives of the exhibition India and the World: A History in Nine Stories, and is a British Museum International Training Programme Fellow.

She has also written several books for young audiences and contributed to national and international journals. Her approach combines storytelling, interpretation, and education to create accessible and inclusive museum experiences that encourage well-being and cultural understanding.