The Bangladesh Bhavana museum in Santiniketan is likely to reopen for visitors on Poila Baisakh (Bengali New Year) with a new look after the completion of all pending work.

The decision was taken in a joint meeting between a four-member team from Bangladesh and representatives of Visva-Bharati on Sunday evening.

"We will start our work from the middle of February which will be completed within a month. We have jointly decided with senior Visva-Bharati officials to reopen the museum for all on Poila Baisakh," said Md Kamruzzaman, director of the Bangladesh National Museum who headed the four-member team.

"The museum will be extended and there will be many changes. We plan to add a set of new items, including memorabilia connecting the history of Bangladesh, Rabindranath Tagore and our Liberation War. We will soon send a list of items which will be added to the museum," he added.

The other three members of the team are the curator and designer of the museum Tarik Sujat, architect Ehsan Khan and the deputy keeper of Bangladesh National Museum Dibakar Sikder.

On May 25, 2018, Bangladesh Bhavana was jointly inaugurated by Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Sheikh Hasina. But Covid forced the makeshift museum to close in 2020, stalling its completion too.

Recently, the Bangladesh government has given the go-ahead for the completion of the Bangladesh Bhavana Museum in Santiniketan following Sheikh Hasina’s election victory.

"The meeting with the delegation from the Bangladesh National Museum was very fruitful. Our acting vice chancellor Sanjoy Kumar Mallik, who took part in the meeting through an online platform, ensured to extend all kinds of help in the reopening of the museum," said Mandebndra Mukhopadhyay, the chief coordinator of Bangladesh Bhavana in Visva-Bharati.

Bangladesh Bhavana, a 44,261 sqft facility set up with funds provided by Dhaka, encompasses a museum, a library, an auditorium and a centre for research on the Liberation War of 1971 apart from the country’s history, culture and art.

On Sunday, the Bangladesh delegations handed over a few postal stamps, coins and currency notes of Bangladesh for display in the museum.