India, June 21 -- Kunal Ray's Museum of Goa will serve as an eye-opener for readers who think of museums as stuffy places with musty old cabinets and ancient artefacts bearing no relation to their present life. A biography of an institution called Museum of Goa (MOG) - constructed over 18 months on a plot of land at the Pilerne Industrial Estate in Saligao - and of its founding director, Subodh Kerkar, this book shows that museums can also be "workshops for ideas"; that they can be vibrant and participatory spaces that invite visitors to be co-creators of meaning and not just consumers of a collection.

Interestingly, MOG is not just an acronym. The word means 'love' in Konkani, which is the official language of Goa and is widely spoken t...