New Delhi: There may be no National Museum in Delhi for at least a full year, as the old building is set to be demolished in March 2024 and the Union culture ministry is supposed to take possession of the new building only in March 2025, according to The Indian Express.The new museum, Yug Yugeen Bharat, will come up at the North and South Blocks. Officials of the National Museum have been asked by the ministry to try and vacate the existing building on Janpath by the end of this year, the newspaper reported.If this timeline plays out, it means researchers and the public will not have access to the artefacts stored at the National Museum for one year or more. The museum showcases nearly 10% of its collection of over 2.10 lakh artefacts.Since the museum will be without a building for a while, officials from the museum and the culture ministry have decided that “a suitable space for storage and for the existing staff of National Museum needs to be identified for which a space consultant or a space assessment company should be appointed”, according to The Indian Express.“Officials said a roadmap for the shifting of the museum and a concept note are to be drawn at the earliest. They said they are working to identify a suitable space for storage of the museum objects and for the existing museum staff,” the newspaper reported.More than 75 globally renowned scholars, artists, writers, curators and museum professionals had earlier criticised the Union government’s Central Vista redevelopment plans, raising specific concern about the National Museum. “The National Museum, in particular, has historical value and requires renovation and augmentation, not demolition. The rushed destruction of these structures will cause irrevocable harm to world-renowned institutions that have been painstakingly built over decades,” they said.“The Central Vista demolition threatens the collections of these heritage repositories. We are concerned that such a shift would impact the state of conservation of several objects. Even under normal circumstances, it would be a complex and risky operation to shift the diverse and irreplaceable treasures of the National Museum, the archival records held in the National Archives, and the manuscript holdings of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.”