World of Indian Art

In 1949, Jamini Roy moved from his modest Baghbazar home in north Calcutta to the genteel neighbourhood of Ballygunge Place, at the time an open area with bungalows in a neighbourhood occupied by professionals. Here, as his practice grew, so did his family, and the artist added rooms and floors to the home in which he lived till his passing away in 1972. Four years later, the Government of India declared him a National Treasure artist. In March 2023, the historic home of India’s most loved modernist was acquired by India’s most respected art company, DAG, for the express purpose of creating India’s first world-class private single-artist museum and cultural resource centre on the life, work and times of this pioneering artist. India has a lacuna of professionally run private art museums and there are no professionally run single-artist museums in the country, a gap that DAG hopes to fill with the restoration of the 75-year-old historical house with the help of conservation architects and designers. The Jamini Roy House Museum is envisioned as a tribute to the artist, and the values of simplicity, creativity and universalism that he espoused.

DAG was established in New Delhi in 1993 and the capital has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of the country’s largest and most respected art institution. It began in 1993 at Hauz Khas Village, which was then a sleepy outpost in the city with a historic character. But once the village became a trendy address for bars, lounges and fashion boutiques, DAG felt the need for a new location in keeping with its mandate of accessibility as well as the right environment in which to view art. The gallery, therefore, re-located to The Claridges in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi where its exhibitions proved a grand success.

To serve the ambitious nature of DAG’s growth, the need for larger galleries was soon felt. The new galleries are located on Janpath adjacent to Windsor Place within walking distance of hotels and the city’s shopping districts. With two galleries, it can host two simultaneous exhibitions or a single larger one. A rooftop terrace is ideal for events, conversations and other activities DAG may want to host from time to time.

DAG takes a significant step towards its vision of making art accessible for all, allocating over 180 artworks and archival artefacts from the collection to its Museums Programme. With the launch of the new website, these works are now on view online.

The works on view as a part of the digital museum are drawn primarily from DAG’s historic collection of Bengal art, ranging across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It provides a unique resource for art lovers to explore the evolution of art in the region, at a time when Calcutta became a hub for global exchanges as the capital of the British Empire. Starting with experiments with academic art in the early days of the colony, the collection traverses the artistic developments of the Swadeshi period and the tumultuous years before and after Independence. In addition, there are a range of photographs and objects from DAG’s archives, presented as capsule collections that delve into specific micro-histories, and open up new areas of research.

Accompanied with illustrated stories, timelines and videos this growing online collection brings the museum experience into our homes and is envisioned as an enduring resource that can be savoured over time for learning, analysis and simply for the love of art!

Explore the collection online

Printmaker Anupam Sud started featuring masks in her work following a visit to Japan where she was particularly drawn to Japanese theatre. The idea of changeability that marks the use of masks has been used potently by the artist across a series of works, including Persona.

DAG introduced the artist to New York with a retrospective of the exhibition that opened at its gallery in Fuller Building. Her work, which is widely collected, was also part of an exhibition on women artists at the gallery and has drawn a great deal of interest. The acquisition of Persona by the Smith College Museum of Art as part of its collection of art by South Asian women marks an important step in the printmaker’s global appeal.

The Art Lab is a travelling, popup museum that takes art into schools, making DAG’s extensive collection directly accessible to young people. Over two weeks, students immerse themselves in the exhibition and take over as artists, researchers, and curators to create their own museum. The exhibition is modular by design, and by the end of the process it takes a completely different shape and form as students intervene with their ideas and creative expressions.

Art Lab also engages with the wider community, with students across different classes, parents, local officials, and partner schools who visit the exhibition on Open House days when the classroom is teeming with the energy and engagement of a busy day at the museum. As a part of Art Lab, DAG also offers a workshop for teachers where they explore simple tools for integrating art in their lessons, and build shared knowledge about art based pedagogies.

Started in Kolkata in April 2022, Art Lab has now travelled to four schools, adding a Bengali module for first generation learners so that the programme can be accessed widely, across socio-economic barriers, as the museum travels across the country.

See video

In this issue of the DAG Journal, we explore the tangled histories of collecting art. It is a story that has its roots in the pioneering work of collectors who brought different agendas and ideological motivations for collecting art—from nationalist convictions, as in the case of A. K. Coomaraswamy, or liberal socialist ones, as in the case of W. G. Archer, who also sought to popularize India's valuable folk and tribal art heritage. Moving into the contemporary period, we spoke to collectors and archival institutions that seek to promote ethical practices within collecting, while remaining aware of crucial gaps in their collection. For our term of the month, we consider the concept of provenance which has come to assume such an important position in arts research today, as attested by dedicated teams employed to do this work in museums across the world. We also travelled to the artist Shuvaprasanna's house, hoping to learn how his personal collection informs his art practice, and have presented his collection as a photo essay.

Along with these stories on collecting, we also feature a conversation with the curators of an exhibition of S. H. Raza at Paris Centre Pompidou. It marks a return for the artist, who lived there for most of his working life until his death in 2016.

Read

DAG brings together five Indian abstractionists whose practice, largely away from India, was nevertheless rooted in their experiences and who infused new meaning and substance to the idea of the non-representational in its upcoming exhibition, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’. Featuring Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi as printmakers; Ambadas and Rajendra Dhawan as canvas painters whose language expressed their innermost personalities; Sohan Qadri as a colourist whose principal work was undertaken on paper—the exhibition is based on their philosophical questioning of art’s final goal, something that has been the catalyst for most artists in this genre. Opening on 3 April 2023 at DAG Mumbai, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’ looks at the relationships between their work as their distinctive visual identities mark them apart from each other and illustrates their uniqueness by the cultural and political stance taken by each artist, the subjects they sought inspiration in, and in their processes of creating art.

Preview exhibition

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist. Breaking with the academic as well as the nationalistic convention of the time, Jamini Roy sought his inspiration from his social milieu, turning to terracotta crafts, scroll painters, patua artists, and the friezes of the Bishnupur temples for inspiration. His paintings imbibe the joie-de-vivre of the Santhal tribals and their simple way of life that he emulated with so much success in his practice, as this intimately curated exhibition shows us.

Preview exhibition

In 1949, Jamini Roy moved from his modest Baghbazar home in north Calcutta to the genteel neighbourhood of Ballygunge Place, at the time an open area with bungalows in a neighbourhood occupied by professionals. Here, as his practice grew, so did his family, and the artist added rooms and floors to the home in which he lived till his passing away in 1972. Four years later, the Government of India declared him a National Treasure artist. In March 2023, the historic home of India’s most loved modernist was acquired by India’s most respected art company, DAG, for the express purpose of creating India’s first world-class private single-artist museum and cultural resource centre on the life, work and times of this pioneering artist. India has a lacuna of professionally run private art museums and there are no professionally run single-artist museums in the country, a gap that DAG hopes to fill with the restoration of the 75-year-old historical house with the help of conservation architects and designers. The Jamini Roy House Museum is envisioned as a tribute to the artist, and the values of simplicity, creativity and universalism that he espoused.

DAG was established in New Delhi in 1993 and the capital has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of the country’s largest and most respected art institution. It began in 1993 at Hauz Khas Village, which was then a sleepy outpost in the city with a historic character. But once the village became a trendy address for bars, lounges and fashion boutiques, DAG felt the need for a new location in keeping with its mandate of accessibility as well as the right environment in which to view art. The gallery, therefore, re-located to The Claridges in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi where its exhibitions proved a grand success.

To serve the ambitious nature of DAG’s growth, the need for larger galleries was soon felt. The new galleries are located on Janpath adjacent to Windsor Place within walking distance of hotels and the city’s shopping districts. With two galleries, it can host two simultaneous exhibitions or a single larger one. A rooftop terrace is ideal for events, conversations and other activities DAG may want to host from time to time.

DAG takes a significant step towards its vision of making art accessible for all, allocating over 180 artworks and archival artefacts from the collection to its Museums Programme. With the launch of the new website, these works are now on view online.

The works on view as a part of the digital museum are drawn primarily from DAG’s historic collection of Bengal art, ranging across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It provides a unique resource for art lovers to explore the evolution of art in the region, at a time when Calcutta became a hub for global exchanges as the capital of the British Empire. Starting with experiments with academic art in the early days of the colony, the collection traverses the artistic developments of the Swadeshi period and the tumultuous years before and after Independence. In addition, there are a range of photographs and objects from DAG’s archives, presented as capsule collections that delve into specific micro-histories, and open up new areas of research.

Accompanied with illustrated stories, timelines and videos this growing online collection brings the museum experience into our homes and is envisioned as an enduring resource that can be savoured over time for learning, analysis and simply for the love of art!

Explore the collection online

Printmaker Anupam Sud started featuring masks in her work following a visit to Japan where she was particularly drawn to Japanese theatre. The idea of changeability that marks the use of masks has been used potently by the artist across a series of works, including Persona.

DAG introduced the artist to New York with a retrospective of the exhibition that opened at its gallery in Fuller Building. Her work, which is widely collected, was also part of an exhibition on women artists at the gallery and has drawn a great deal of interest. The acquisition of Persona by the Smith College Museum of Art as part of its collection of art by South Asian women marks an important step in the printmaker’s global appeal.

The Art Lab is a travelling, popup museum that takes art into schools, making DAG’s extensive collection directly accessible to young people. Over two weeks, students immerse themselves in the exhibition and take over as artists, researchers, and curators to create their own museum. The exhibition is modular by design, and by the end of the process it takes a completely different shape and form as students intervene with their ideas and creative expressions.

Art Lab also engages with the wider community, with students across different classes, parents, local officials, and partner schools who visit the exhibition on Open House days when the classroom is teeming with the energy and engagement of a busy day at the museum. As a part of Art Lab, DAG also offers a workshop for teachers where they explore simple tools for integrating art in their lessons, and build shared knowledge about art based pedagogies.

Started in Kolkata in April 2022, Art Lab has now travelled to four schools, adding a Bengali module for first generation learners so that the programme can be accessed widely, across socio-economic barriers, as the museum travels across the country.

See video

In this issue of the DAG Journal, we explore the tangled histories of collecting art. It is a story that has its roots in the pioneering work of collectors who brought different agendas and ideological motivations for collecting art—from nationalist convictions, as in the case of A. K. Coomaraswamy, or liberal socialist ones, as in the case of W. G. Archer, who also sought to popularize India's valuable folk and tribal art heritage. Moving into the contemporary period, we spoke to collectors and archival institutions that seek to promote ethical practices within collecting, while remaining aware of crucial gaps in their collection. For our term of the month, we consider the concept of provenance which has come to assume such an important position in arts research today, as attested by dedicated teams employed to do this work in museums across the world. We also travelled to the artist Shuvaprasanna's house, hoping to learn how his personal collection informs his art practice, and have presented his collection as a photo essay.

Along with these stories on collecting, we also feature a conversation with the curators of an exhibition of S. H. Raza at Paris Centre Pompidou. It marks a return for the artist, who lived there for most of his working life until his death in 2016.

Read

DAG brings together five Indian abstractionists whose practice, largely away from India, was nevertheless rooted in their experiences and who infused new meaning and substance to the idea of the non-representational in its upcoming exhibition, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’. Featuring Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi as printmakers; Ambadas and Rajendra Dhawan as canvas painters whose language expressed their innermost personalities; Sohan Qadri as a colourist whose principal work was undertaken on paper—the exhibition is based on their philosophical questioning of art’s final goal, something that has been the catalyst for most artists in this genre. Opening on 3 April 2023 at DAG Mumbai, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’ looks at the relationships between their work as their distinctive visual identities mark them apart from each other and illustrates their uniqueness by the cultural and political stance taken by each artist, the subjects they sought inspiration in, and in their processes of creating art.

Preview exhibition

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist. Breaking with the academic as well as the nationalistic convention of the time, Jamini Roy sought his inspiration from his social milieu, turning to terracotta crafts, scroll painters, patua artists, and the friezes of the Bishnupur temples for inspiration. His paintings imbibe the joie-de-vivre of the Santhal tribals and their simple way of life that he emulated with so much success in his practice, as this intimately curated exhibition shows us.

Preview exhibition

In 1949, Jamini Roy moved from his modest Baghbazar home in north Calcutta to the genteel neighbourhood of Ballygunge Place, at the time an open area with bungalows in a neighbourhood occupied by professionals. Here, as his practice grew, so did his family, and the artist added rooms and floors to the home in which he lived till his passing away in 1972. Four years later, the Government of India declared him a National Treasure artist. In March 2023, the historic home of India’s most loved modernist was acquired by India’s most respected art company, DAG, for the express purpose of creating India’s first world-class private single-artist museum and cultural resource centre on the life, work and times of this pioneering artist. India has a lacuna of professionally run private art museums and there are no professionally run single-artist museums in the country, a gap that DAG hopes to fill with the restoration of the 75-year-old historical house with the help of conservation architects and designers. The Jamini Roy House Museum is envisioned as a tribute to the artist, and the values of simplicity, creativity and universalism that he espoused.

DAG was established in New Delhi in 1993 and the capital has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of the country’s largest and most respected art institution. It began in 1993 at Hauz Khas Village, which was then a sleepy outpost in the city with a historic character. But once the village became a trendy address for bars, lounges and fashion boutiques, DAG felt the need for a new location in keeping with its mandate of accessibility as well as the right environment in which to view art. The gallery, therefore, re-located to The Claridges in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi where its exhibitions proved a grand success.

To serve the ambitious nature of DAG’s growth, the need for larger galleries was soon felt. The new galleries are located on Janpath adjacent to Windsor Place within walking distance of hotels and the city’s shopping districts. With two galleries, it can host two simultaneous exhibitions or a single larger one. A rooftop terrace is ideal for events, conversations and other activities DAG may want to host from time to time.

DAG takes a significant step towards its vision of making art accessible for all, allocating over 180 artworks and archival artefacts from the collection to its Museums Programme. With the launch of the new website, these works are now on view online.

The works on view as a part of the digital museum are drawn primarily from DAG’s historic collection of Bengal art, ranging across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It provides a unique resource for art lovers to explore the evolution of art in the region, at a time when Calcutta became a hub for global exchanges as the capital of the British Empire. Starting with experiments with academic art in the early days of the colony, the collection traverses the artistic developments of the Swadeshi period and the tumultuous years before and after Independence. In addition, there are a range of photographs and objects from DAG’s archives, presented as capsule collections that delve into specific micro-histories, and open up new areas of research.

Accompanied with illustrated stories, timelines and videos this growing online collection brings the museum experience into our homes and is envisioned as an enduring resource that can be savoured over time for learning, analysis and simply for the love of art!

Explore the collection online

Printmaker Anupam Sud started featuring masks in her work following a visit to Japan where she was particularly drawn to Japanese theatre. The idea of changeability that marks the use of masks has been used potently by the artist across a series of works, including Persona.

DAG introduced the artist to New York with a retrospective of the exhibition that opened at its gallery in Fuller Building. Her work, which is widely collected, was also part of an exhibition on women artists at the gallery and has drawn a great deal of interest. The acquisition of Persona by the Smith College Museum of Art as part of its collection of art by South Asian women marks an important step in the printmaker’s global appeal.

The Art Lab is a travelling, popup museum that takes art into schools, making DAG’s extensive collection directly accessible to young people. Over two weeks, students immerse themselves in the exhibition and take over as artists, researchers, and curators to create their own museum. The exhibition is modular by design, and by the end of the process it takes a completely different shape and form as students intervene with their ideas and creative expressions.

Art Lab also engages with the wider community, with students across different classes, parents, local officials, and partner schools who visit the exhibition on Open House days when the classroom is teeming with the energy and engagement of a busy day at the museum. As a part of Art Lab, DAG also offers a workshop for teachers where they explore simple tools for integrating art in their lessons, and build shared knowledge about art based pedagogies.

Started in Kolkata in April 2022, Art Lab has now travelled to four schools, adding a Bengali module for first generation learners so that the programme can be accessed widely, across socio-economic barriers, as the museum travels across the country.

See video

In this issue of the DAG Journal, we explore the tangled histories of collecting art. It is a story that has its roots in the pioneering work of collectors who brought different agendas and ideological motivations for collecting art—from nationalist convictions, as in the case of A. K. Coomaraswamy, or liberal socialist ones, as in the case of W. G. Archer, who also sought to popularize India's valuable folk and tribal art heritage. Moving into the contemporary period, we spoke to collectors and archival institutions that seek to promote ethical practices within collecting, while remaining aware of crucial gaps in their collection. For our term of the month, we consider the concept of provenance which has come to assume such an important position in arts research today, as attested by dedicated teams employed to do this work in museums across the world. We also travelled to the artist Shuvaprasanna's house, hoping to learn how his personal collection informs his art practice, and have presented his collection as a photo essay.

Along with these stories on collecting, we also feature a conversation with the curators of an exhibition of S. H. Raza at Paris Centre Pompidou. It marks a return for the artist, who lived there for most of his working life until his death in 2016.

Read

DAG brings together five Indian abstractionists whose practice, largely away from India, was nevertheless rooted in their experiences and who infused new meaning and substance to the idea of the non-representational in its upcoming exhibition, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’. Featuring Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi as printmakers; Ambadas and Rajendra Dhawan as canvas painters whose language expressed their innermost personalities; Sohan Qadri as a colourist whose principal work was undertaken on paper—the exhibition is based on their philosophical questioning of art’s final goal, something that has been the catalyst for most artists in this genre. Opening on 3 April 2023 at DAG Mumbai, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’ looks at the relationships between their work as their distinctive visual identities mark them apart from each other and illustrates their uniqueness by the cultural and political stance taken by each artist, the subjects they sought inspiration in, and in their processes of creating art.

Preview exhibition

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist. Breaking with the academic as well as the nationalistic convention of the time, Jamini Roy sought his inspiration from his social milieu, turning to terracotta crafts, scroll painters, patua artists, and the friezes of the Bishnupur temples for inspiration. His paintings imbibe the joie-de-vivre of the Santhal tribals and their simple way of life that he emulated with so much success in his practice, as this intimately curated exhibition shows us.

Preview exhibition

In 1949, Jamini Roy moved from his modest Baghbazar home in north Calcutta to the genteel neighbourhood of Ballygunge Place, at the time an open area with bungalows in a neighbourhood occupied by professionals. Here, as his practice grew, so did his family, and the artist added rooms and floors to the home in which he lived till his passing away in 1972. Four years later, the Government of India declared him a National Treasure artist. In March 2023, the historic home of India’s most loved modernist was acquired by India’s most respected art company, DAG, for the express purpose of creating India’s first world-class private single-artist museum and cultural resource centre on the life, work and times of this pioneering artist. India has a lacuna of professionally run private art museums and there are no professionally run single-artist museums in the country, a gap that DAG hopes to fill with the restoration of the 75-year-old historical house with the help of conservation architects and designers. The Jamini Roy House Museum is envisioned as a tribute to the artist, and the values of simplicity, creativity and universalism that he espoused.

DAG was established in New Delhi in 1993 and the capital has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of the country’s largest and most respected art institution. It began in 1993 at Hauz Khas Village, which was then a sleepy outpost in the city with a historic character. But once the village became a trendy address for bars, lounges and fashion boutiques, DAG felt the need for a new location in keeping with its mandate of accessibility as well as the right environment in which to view art. The gallery, therefore, re-located to The Claridges in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi where its exhibitions proved a grand success.

To serve the ambitious nature of DAG’s growth, the need for larger galleries was soon felt. The new galleries are located on Janpath adjacent to Windsor Place within walking distance of hotels and the city’s shopping districts. With two galleries, it can host two simultaneous exhibitions or a single larger one. A rooftop terrace is ideal for events, conversations and other activities DAG may want to host from time to time.

DAG takes a significant step towards its vision of making art accessible for all, allocating over 180 artworks and archival artefacts from the collection to its Museums Programme. With the launch of the new website, these works are now on view online.

The works on view as a part of the digital museum are drawn primarily from DAG’s historic collection of Bengal art, ranging across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It provides a unique resource for art lovers to explore the evolution of art in the region, at a time when Calcutta became a hub for global exchanges as the capital of the British Empire. Starting with experiments with academic art in the early days of the colony, the collection traverses the artistic developments of the Swadeshi period and the tumultuous years before and after Independence. In addition, there are a range of photographs and objects from DAG’s archives, presented as capsule collections that delve into specific micro-histories, and open up new areas of research.

Accompanied with illustrated stories, timelines and videos this growing online collection brings the museum experience into our homes and is envisioned as an enduring resource that can be savoured over time for learning, analysis and simply for the love of art!

Explore the collection online

Printmaker Anupam Sud started featuring masks in her work following a visit to Japan where she was particularly drawn to Japanese theatre. The idea of changeability that marks the use of masks has been used potently by the artist across a series of works, including Persona.

DAG introduced the artist to New York with a retrospective of the exhibition that opened at its gallery in Fuller Building. Her work, which is widely collected, was also part of an exhibition on women artists at the gallery and has drawn a great deal of interest. The acquisition of Persona by the Smith College Museum of Art as part of its collection of art by South Asian women marks an important step in the printmaker’s global appeal.

The Art Lab is a travelling, popup museum that takes art into schools, making DAG’s extensive collection directly accessible to young people. Over two weeks, students immerse themselves in the exhibition and take over as artists, researchers, and curators to create their own museum. The exhibition is modular by design, and by the end of the process it takes a completely different shape and form as students intervene with their ideas and creative expressions.

Art Lab also engages with the wider community, with students across different classes, parents, local officials, and partner schools who visit the exhibition on Open House days when the classroom is teeming with the energy and engagement of a busy day at the museum. As a part of Art Lab, DAG also offers a workshop for teachers where they explore simple tools for integrating art in their lessons, and build shared knowledge about art based pedagogies.

Started in Kolkata in April 2022, Art Lab has now travelled to four schools, adding a Bengali module for first generation learners so that the programme can be accessed widely, across socio-economic barriers, as the museum travels across the country.

See video

In this issue of the DAG Journal, we explore the tangled histories of collecting art. It is a story that has its roots in the pioneering work of collectors who brought different agendas and ideological motivations for collecting art—from nationalist convictions, as in the case of A. K. Coomaraswamy, or liberal socialist ones, as in the case of W. G. Archer, who also sought to popularize India's valuable folk and tribal art heritage. Moving into the contemporary period, we spoke to collectors and archival institutions that seek to promote ethical practices within collecting, while remaining aware of crucial gaps in their collection. For our term of the month, we consider the concept of provenance which has come to assume such an important position in arts research today, as attested by dedicated teams employed to do this work in museums across the world. We also travelled to the artist Shuvaprasanna's house, hoping to learn how his personal collection informs his art practice, and have presented his collection as a photo essay.

Along with these stories on collecting, we also feature a conversation with the curators of an exhibition of S. H. Raza at Paris Centre Pompidou. It marks a return for the artist, who lived there for most of his working life until his death in 2016.

Read

DAG brings together five Indian abstractionists whose practice, largely away from India, was nevertheless rooted in their experiences and who infused new meaning and substance to the idea of the non-representational in its upcoming exhibition, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’. Featuring Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi as printmakers; Ambadas and Rajendra Dhawan as canvas painters whose language expressed their innermost personalities; Sohan Qadri as a colourist whose principal work was undertaken on paper—the exhibition is based on their philosophical questioning of art’s final goal, something that has been the catalyst for most artists in this genre. Opening on 3 April 2023 at DAG Mumbai, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’ looks at the relationships between their work as their distinctive visual identities mark them apart from each other and illustrates their uniqueness by the cultural and political stance taken by each artist, the subjects they sought inspiration in, and in their processes of creating art.

Preview exhibition

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist. Breaking with the academic as well as the nationalistic convention of the time, Jamini Roy sought his inspiration from his social milieu, turning to terracotta crafts, scroll painters, patua artists, and the friezes of the Bishnupur temples for inspiration. His paintings imbibe the joie-de-vivre of the Santhal tribals and their simple way of life that he emulated with so much success in his practice, as this intimately curated exhibition shows us.

Preview exhibition

In 1949, Jamini Roy moved from his modest Baghbazar home in north Calcutta to the genteel neighbourhood of Ballygunge Place, at the time an open area with bungalows in a neighbourhood occupied by professionals. Here, as his practice grew, so did his family, and the artist added rooms and floors to the home in which he lived till his passing away in 1972. Four years later, the Government of India declared him a National Treasure artist. In March 2023, the historic home of India’s most loved modernist was acquired by India’s most respected art company, DAG, for the express purpose of creating India’s first world-class private single-artist museum and cultural resource centre on the life, work and times of this pioneering artist. India has a lacuna of professionally run private art museums and there are no professionally run single-artist museums in the country, a gap that DAG hopes to fill with the restoration of the 75-year-old historical house with the help of conservation architects and designers. The Jamini Roy House Museum is envisioned as a tribute to the artist, and the values of simplicity, creativity and universalism that he espoused.

DAG was established in New Delhi in 1993 and the capital has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of the country’s largest and most respected art institution. It began in 1993 at Hauz Khas Village, which was then a sleepy outpost in the city with a historic character. But once the village became a trendy address for bars, lounges and fashion boutiques, DAG felt the need for a new location in keeping with its mandate of accessibility as well as the right environment in which to view art. The gallery, therefore, re-located to The Claridges in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi where its exhibitions proved a grand success.

To serve the ambitious nature of DAG’s growth, the need for larger galleries was soon felt. The new galleries are located on Janpath adjacent to Windsor Place within walking distance of hotels and the city’s shopping districts. With two galleries, it can host two simultaneous exhibitions or a single larger one. A rooftop terrace is ideal for events, conversations and other activities DAG may want to host from time to time.

DAG takes a significant step towards its vision of making art accessible for all, allocating over 180 artworks and archival artefacts from the collection to its Museums Programme. With the launch of the new website, these works are now on view online.

The works on view as a part of the digital museum are drawn primarily from DAG’s historic collection of Bengal art, ranging across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It provides a unique resource for art lovers to explore the evolution of art in the region, at a time when Calcutta became a hub for global exchanges as the capital of the British Empire. Starting with experiments with academic art in the early days of the colony, the collection traverses the artistic developments of the Swadeshi period and the tumultuous years before and after Independence. In addition, there are a range of photographs and objects from DAG’s archives, presented as capsule collections that delve into specific micro-histories, and open up new areas of research.

Accompanied with illustrated stories, timelines and videos this growing online collection brings the museum experience into our homes and is envisioned as an enduring resource that can be savoured over time for learning, analysis and simply for the love of art!

Explore the collection online

Printmaker Anupam Sud started featuring masks in her work following a visit to Japan where she was particularly drawn to Japanese theatre. The idea of changeability that marks the use of masks has been used potently by the artist across a series of works, including Persona.

DAG introduced the artist to New York with a retrospective of the exhibition that opened at its gallery in Fuller Building. Her work, which is widely collected, was also part of an exhibition on women artists at the gallery and has drawn a great deal of interest. The acquisition of Persona by the Smith College Museum of Art as part of its collection of art by South Asian women marks an important step in the printmaker’s global appeal.

The Art Lab is a travelling, popup museum that takes art into schools, making DAG’s extensive collection directly accessible to young people. Over two weeks, students immerse themselves in the exhibition and take over as artists, researchers, and curators to create their own museum. The exhibition is modular by design, and by the end of the process it takes a completely different shape and form as students intervene with their ideas and creative expressions.

Art Lab also engages with the wider community, with students across different classes, parents, local officials, and partner schools who visit the exhibition on Open House days when the classroom is teeming with the energy and engagement of a busy day at the museum. As a part of Art Lab, DAG also offers a workshop for teachers where they explore simple tools for integrating art in their lessons, and build shared knowledge about art based pedagogies.

Started in Kolkata in April 2022, Art Lab has now travelled to four schools, adding a Bengali module for first generation learners so that the programme can be accessed widely, across socio-economic barriers, as the museum travels across the country.

See video

In this issue of the DAG Journal, we explore the tangled histories of collecting art. It is a story that has its roots in the pioneering work of collectors who brought different agendas and ideological motivations for collecting art—from nationalist convictions, as in the case of A. K. Coomaraswamy, or liberal socialist ones, as in the case of W. G. Archer, who also sought to popularize India's valuable folk and tribal art heritage. Moving into the contemporary period, we spoke to collectors and archival institutions that seek to promote ethical practices within collecting, while remaining aware of crucial gaps in their collection. For our term of the month, we consider the concept of provenance which has come to assume such an important position in arts research today, as attested by dedicated teams employed to do this work in museums across the world. We also travelled to the artist Shuvaprasanna's house, hoping to learn how his personal collection informs his art practice, and have presented his collection as a photo essay.

Along with these stories on collecting, we also feature a conversation with the curators of an exhibition of S. H. Raza at Paris Centre Pompidou. It marks a return for the artist, who lived there for most of his working life until his death in 2016.

Read

DAG brings together five Indian abstractionists whose practice, largely away from India, was nevertheless rooted in their experiences and who infused new meaning and substance to the idea of the non-representational in its upcoming exhibition, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’. Featuring Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi as printmakers; Ambadas and Rajendra Dhawan as canvas painters whose language expressed their innermost personalities; Sohan Qadri as a colourist whose principal work was undertaken on paper—the exhibition is based on their philosophical questioning of art’s final goal, something that has been the catalyst for most artists in this genre. Opening on 3 April 2023 at DAG Mumbai, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’ looks at the relationships between their work as their distinctive visual identities mark them apart from each other and illustrates their uniqueness by the cultural and political stance taken by each artist, the subjects they sought inspiration in, and in their processes of creating art.

Preview exhibition

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist. Breaking with the academic as well as the nationalistic convention of the time, Jamini Roy sought his inspiration from his social milieu, turning to terracotta crafts, scroll painters, patua artists, and the friezes of the Bishnupur temples for inspiration. His paintings imbibe the joie-de-vivre of the Santhal tribals and their simple way of life that he emulated with so much success in his practice, as this intimately curated exhibition shows us.

Preview exhibition

In 1949, Jamini Roy moved from his modest Baghbazar home in north Calcutta to the genteel neighbourhood of Ballygunge Place, at the time an open area with bungalows in a neighbourhood occupied by professionals. Here, as his practice grew, so did his family, and the artist added rooms and floors to the home in which he lived till his passing away in 1972. Four years later, the Government of India declared him a National Treasure artist. In March 2023, the historic home of India’s most loved modernist was acquired by India’s most respected art company, DAG, for the express purpose of creating India’s first world-class private single-artist museum and cultural resource centre on the life, work and times of this pioneering artist. India has a lacuna of professionally run private art museums and there are no professionally run single-artist museums in the country, a gap that DAG hopes to fill with the restoration of the 75-year-old historical house with the help of conservation architects and designers. The Jamini Roy House Museum is envisioned as a tribute to the artist, and the values of simplicity, creativity and universalism that he espoused.

DAG was established in New Delhi in 1993 and the capital has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of the country’s largest and most respected art institution. It began in 1993 at Hauz Khas Village, which was then a sleepy outpost in the city with a historic character. But once the village became a trendy address for bars, lounges and fashion boutiques, DAG felt the need for a new location in keeping with its mandate of accessibility as well as the right environment in which to view art. The gallery, therefore, re-located to The Claridges in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi where its exhibitions proved a grand success.

To serve the ambitious nature of DAG’s growth, the need for larger galleries was soon felt. The new galleries are located on Janpath adjacent to Windsor Place within walking distance of hotels and the city’s shopping districts. With two galleries, it can host two simultaneous exhibitions or a single larger one. A rooftop terrace is ideal for events, conversations and other activities DAG may want to host from time to time.

DAG takes a significant step towards its vision of making art accessible for all, allocating over 180 artworks and archival artefacts from the collection to its Museums Programme. With the launch of the new website, these works are now on view online.

The works on view as a part of the digital museum are drawn primarily from DAG’s historic collection of Bengal art, ranging across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It provides a unique resource for art lovers to explore the evolution of art in the region, at a time when Calcutta became a hub for global exchanges as the capital of the British Empire. Starting with experiments with academic art in the early days of the colony, the collection traverses the artistic developments of the Swadeshi period and the tumultuous years before and after Independence. In addition, there are a range of photographs and objects from DAG’s archives, presented as capsule collections that delve into specific micro-histories, and open up new areas of research.

Accompanied with illustrated stories, timelines and videos this growing online collection brings the museum experience into our homes and is envisioned as an enduring resource that can be savoured over time for learning, analysis and simply for the love of art!

Explore the collection online

Printmaker Anupam Sud started featuring masks in her work following a visit to Japan where she was particularly drawn to Japanese theatre. The idea of changeability that marks the use of masks has been used potently by the artist across a series of works, including Persona.

DAG introduced the artist to New York with a retrospective of the exhibition that opened at its gallery in Fuller Building. Her work, which is widely collected, was also part of an exhibition on women artists at the gallery and has drawn a great deal of interest. The acquisition of Persona by the Smith College Museum of Art as part of its collection of art by South Asian women marks an important step in the printmaker’s global appeal.

The Art Lab is a travelling, popup museum that takes art into schools, making DAG’s extensive collection directly accessible to young people. Over two weeks, students immerse themselves in the exhibition and take over as artists, researchers, and curators to create their own museum. The exhibition is modular by design, and by the end of the process it takes a completely different shape and form as students intervene with their ideas and creative expressions.

Art Lab also engages with the wider community, with students across different classes, parents, local officials, and partner schools who visit the exhibition on Open House days when the classroom is teeming with the energy and engagement of a busy day at the museum. As a part of Art Lab, DAG also offers a workshop for teachers where they explore simple tools for integrating art in their lessons, and build shared knowledge about art based pedagogies.

Started in Kolkata in April 2022, Art Lab has now travelled to four schools, adding a Bengali module for first generation learners so that the programme can be accessed widely, across socio-economic barriers, as the museum travels across the country.

See video

In this issue of the DAG Journal, we explore the tangled histories of collecting art. It is a story that has its roots in the pioneering work of collectors who brought different agendas and ideological motivations for collecting art—from nationalist convictions, as in the case of A. K. Coomaraswamy, or liberal socialist ones, as in the case of W. G. Archer, who also sought to popularize India's valuable folk and tribal art heritage. Moving into the contemporary period, we spoke to collectors and archival institutions that seek to promote ethical practices within collecting, while remaining aware of crucial gaps in their collection. For our term of the month, we consider the concept of provenance which has come to assume such an important position in arts research today, as attested by dedicated teams employed to do this work in museums across the world. We also travelled to the artist Shuvaprasanna's house, hoping to learn how his personal collection informs his art practice, and have presented his collection as a photo essay.

Along with these stories on collecting, we also feature a conversation with the curators of an exhibition of S. H. Raza at Paris Centre Pompidou. It marks a return for the artist, who lived there for most of his working life until his death in 2016.

Read

DAG brings together five Indian abstractionists whose practice, largely away from India, was nevertheless rooted in their experiences and who infused new meaning and substance to the idea of the non-representational in its upcoming exhibition, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’. Featuring Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi as printmakers; Ambadas and Rajendra Dhawan as canvas painters whose language expressed their innermost personalities; Sohan Qadri as a colourist whose principal work was undertaken on paper—the exhibition is based on their philosophical questioning of art’s final goal, something that has been the catalyst for most artists in this genre. Opening on 3 April 2023 at DAG Mumbai, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’ looks at the relationships between their work as their distinctive visual identities mark them apart from each other and illustrates their uniqueness by the cultural and political stance taken by each artist, the subjects they sought inspiration in, and in their processes of creating art.

Preview exhibition

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist. Breaking with the academic as well as the nationalistic convention of the time, Jamini Roy sought his inspiration from his social milieu, turning to terracotta crafts, scroll painters, patua artists, and the friezes of the Bishnupur temples for inspiration. His paintings imbibe the joie-de-vivre of the Santhal tribals and their simple way of life that he emulated with so much success in his practice, as this intimately curated exhibition shows us.

Preview exhibition

In 1949, Jamini Roy moved from his modest Baghbazar home in north Calcutta to the genteel neighbourhood of Ballygunge Place, at the time an open area with bungalows in a neighbourhood occupied by professionals. Here, as his practice grew, so did his family, and the artist added rooms and floors to the home in which he lived till his passing away in 1972. Four years later, the Government of India declared him a National Treasure artist. In March 2023, the historic home of India’s most loved modernist was acquired by India’s most respected art company, DAG, for the express purpose of creating India’s first world-class private single-artist museum and cultural resource centre on the life, work and times of this pioneering artist. India has a lacuna of professionally run private art museums and there are no professionally run single-artist museums in the country, a gap that DAG hopes to fill with the restoration of the 75-year-old historical house with the help of conservation architects and designers. The Jamini Roy House Museum is envisioned as a tribute to the artist, and the values of simplicity, creativity and universalism that he espoused.

DAG was established in New Delhi in 1993 and the capital has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of the country’s largest and most respected art institution. It began in 1993 at Hauz Khas Village, which was then a sleepy outpost in the city with a historic character. But once the village became a trendy address for bars, lounges and fashion boutiques, DAG felt the need for a new location in keeping with its mandate of accessibility as well as the right environment in which to view art. The gallery, therefore, re-located to The Claridges in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi where its exhibitions proved a grand success.

To serve the ambitious nature of DAG’s growth, the need for larger galleries was soon felt. The new galleries are located on Janpath adjacent to Windsor Place within walking distance of hotels and the city’s shopping districts. With two galleries, it can host two simultaneous exhibitions or a single larger one. A rooftop terrace is ideal for events, conversations and other activities DAG may want to host from time to time.

DAG takes a significant step towards its vision of making art accessible for all, allocating over 180 artworks and archival artefacts from the collection to its Museums Programme. With the launch of the new website, these works are now on view online.

The works on view as a part of the digital museum are drawn primarily from DAG’s historic collection of Bengal art, ranging across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It provides a unique resource for art lovers to explore the evolution of art in the region, at a time when Calcutta became a hub for global exchanges as the capital of the British Empire. Starting with experiments with academic art in the early days of the colony, the collection traverses the artistic developments of the Swadeshi period and the tumultuous years before and after Independence. In addition, there are a range of photographs and objects from DAG’s archives, presented as capsule collections that delve into specific micro-histories, and open up new areas of research.

Accompanied with illustrated stories, timelines and videos this growing online collection brings the museum experience into our homes and is envisioned as an enduring resource that can be savoured over time for learning, analysis and simply for the love of art!

Explore the collection online

Printmaker Anupam Sud started featuring masks in her work following a visit to Japan where she was particularly drawn to Japanese theatre. The idea of changeability that marks the use of masks has been used potently by the artist across a series of works, including Persona.

DAG introduced the artist to New York with a retrospective of the exhibition that opened at its gallery in Fuller Building. Her work, which is widely collected, was also part of an exhibition on women artists at the gallery and has drawn a great deal of interest. The acquisition of Persona by the Smith College Museum of Art as part of its collection of art by South Asian women marks an important step in the printmaker’s global appeal.

The Art Lab is a travelling, popup museum that takes art into schools, making DAG’s extensive collection directly accessible to young people. Over two weeks, students immerse themselves in the exhibition and take over as artists, researchers, and curators to create their own museum. The exhibition is modular by design, and by the end of the process it takes a completely different shape and form as students intervene with their ideas and creative expressions.

Art Lab also engages with the wider community, with students across different classes, parents, local officials, and partner schools who visit the exhibition on Open House days when the classroom is teeming with the energy and engagement of a busy day at the museum. As a part of Art Lab, DAG also offers a workshop for teachers where they explore simple tools for integrating art in their lessons, and build shared knowledge about art based pedagogies.

Started in Kolkata in April 2022, Art Lab has now travelled to four schools, adding a Bengali module for first generation learners so that the programme can be accessed widely, across socio-economic barriers, as the museum travels across the country.

See video

In this issue of the DAG Journal, we explore the tangled histories of collecting art. It is a story that has its roots in the pioneering work of collectors who brought different agendas and ideological motivations for collecting art—from nationalist convictions, as in the case of A. K. Coomaraswamy, or liberal socialist ones, as in the case of W. G. Archer, who also sought to popularize India's valuable folk and tribal art heritage. Moving into the contemporary period, we spoke to collectors and archival institutions that seek to promote ethical practices within collecting, while remaining aware of crucial gaps in their collection. For our term of the month, we consider the concept of provenance which has come to assume such an important position in arts research today, as attested by dedicated teams employed to do this work in museums across the world. We also travelled to the artist Shuvaprasanna's house, hoping to learn how his personal collection informs his art practice, and have presented his collection as a photo essay.

Along with these stories on collecting, we also feature a conversation with the curators of an exhibition of S. H. Raza at Paris Centre Pompidou. It marks a return for the artist, who lived there for most of his working life until his death in 2016.

Read

DAG brings together five Indian abstractionists whose practice, largely away from India, was nevertheless rooted in their experiences and who infused new meaning and substance to the idea of the non-representational in its upcoming exhibition, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’. Featuring Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi as printmakers; Ambadas and Rajendra Dhawan as canvas painters whose language expressed their innermost personalities; Sohan Qadri as a colourist whose principal work was undertaken on paper—the exhibition is based on their philosophical questioning of art’s final goal, something that has been the catalyst for most artists in this genre. Opening on 3 April 2023 at DAG Mumbai, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’ looks at the relationships between their work as their distinctive visual identities mark them apart from each other and illustrates their uniqueness by the cultural and political stance taken by each artist, the subjects they sought inspiration in, and in their processes of creating art.

Preview exhibition

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist. Breaking with the academic as well as the nationalistic convention of the time, Jamini Roy sought his inspiration from his social milieu, turning to terracotta crafts, scroll painters, patua artists, and the friezes of the Bishnupur temples for inspiration. His paintings imbibe the joie-de-vivre of the Santhal tribals and their simple way of life that he emulated with so much success in his practice, as this intimately curated exhibition shows us.

Preview exhibition

In 1949, Jamini Roy moved from his modest Baghbazar home in north Calcutta to the genteel neighbourhood of Ballygunge Place, at the time an open area with bungalows in a neighbourhood occupied by professionals. Here, as his practice grew, so did his family, and the artist added rooms and floors to the home in which he lived till his passing away in 1972. Four years later, the Government of India declared him a National Treasure artist. In March 2023, the historic home of India’s most loved modernist was acquired by India’s most respected art company, DAG, for the express purpose of creating India’s first world-class private single-artist museum and cultural resource centre on the life, work and times of this pioneering artist. India has a lacuna of professionally run private art museums and there are no professionally run single-artist museums in the country, a gap that DAG hopes to fill with the restoration of the 75-year-old historical house with the help of conservation architects and designers. The Jamini Roy House Museum is envisioned as a tribute to the artist, and the values of simplicity, creativity and universalism that he espoused.

DAG was established in New Delhi in 1993 and the capital has played a pivotal role in the growth and development of the country’s largest and most respected art institution. It began in 1993 at Hauz Khas Village, which was then a sleepy outpost in the city with a historic character. But once the village became a trendy address for bars, lounges and fashion boutiques, DAG felt the need for a new location in keeping with its mandate of accessibility as well as the right environment in which to view art. The gallery, therefore, re-located to The Claridges in the heart of Lutyens’s Delhi where its exhibitions proved a grand success.

To serve the ambitious nature of DAG’s growth, the need for larger galleries was soon felt. The new galleries are located on Janpath adjacent to Windsor Place within walking distance of hotels and the city’s shopping districts. With two galleries, it can host two simultaneous exhibitions or a single larger one. A rooftop terrace is ideal for events, conversations and other activities DAG may want to host from time to time.

DAG takes a significant step towards its vision of making art accessible for all, allocating over 180 artworks and archival artefacts from the collection to its Museums Programme. With the launch of the new website, these works are now on view online.

The works on view as a part of the digital museum are drawn primarily from DAG’s historic collection of Bengal art, ranging across the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It provides a unique resource for art lovers to explore the evolution of art in the region, at a time when Calcutta became a hub for global exchanges as the capital of the British Empire. Starting with experiments with academic art in the early days of the colony, the collection traverses the artistic developments of the Swadeshi period and the tumultuous years before and after Independence. In addition, there are a range of photographs and objects from DAG’s archives, presented as capsule collections that delve into specific micro-histories, and open up new areas of research.

Accompanied with illustrated stories, timelines and videos this growing online collection brings the museum experience into our homes and is envisioned as an enduring resource that can be savoured over time for learning, analysis and simply for the love of art!

Explore the collection online

Printmaker Anupam Sud started featuring masks in her work following a visit to Japan where she was particularly drawn to Japanese theatre. The idea of changeability that marks the use of masks has been used potently by the artist across a series of works, including Persona.

DAG introduced the artist to New York with a retrospective of the exhibition that opened at its gallery in Fuller Building. Her work, which is widely collected, was also part of an exhibition on women artists at the gallery and has drawn a great deal of interest. The acquisition of Persona by the Smith College Museum of Art as part of its collection of art by South Asian women marks an important step in the printmaker’s global appeal.

The Art Lab is a travelling, popup museum that takes art into schools, making DAG’s extensive collection directly accessible to young people. Over two weeks, students immerse themselves in the exhibition and take over as artists, researchers, and curators to create their own museum. The exhibition is modular by design, and by the end of the process it takes a completely different shape and form as students intervene with their ideas and creative expressions.

Art Lab also engages with the wider community, with students across different classes, parents, local officials, and partner schools who visit the exhibition on Open House days when the classroom is teeming with the energy and engagement of a busy day at the museum. As a part of Art Lab, DAG also offers a workshop for teachers where they explore simple tools for integrating art in their lessons, and build shared knowledge about art based pedagogies.

Started in Kolkata in April 2022, Art Lab has now travelled to four schools, adding a Bengali module for first generation learners so that the programme can be accessed widely, across socio-economic barriers, as the museum travels across the country.

See video

In this issue of the DAG Journal, we explore the tangled histories of collecting art. It is a story that has its roots in the pioneering work of collectors who brought different agendas and ideological motivations for collecting art—from nationalist convictions, as in the case of A. K. Coomaraswamy, or liberal socialist ones, as in the case of W. G. Archer, who also sought to popularize India's valuable folk and tribal art heritage. Moving into the contemporary period, we spoke to collectors and archival institutions that seek to promote ethical practices within collecting, while remaining aware of crucial gaps in their collection. For our term of the month, we consider the concept of provenance which has come to assume such an important position in arts research today, as attested by dedicated teams employed to do this work in museums across the world. We also travelled to the artist Shuvaprasanna's house, hoping to learn how his personal collection informs his art practice, and have presented his collection as a photo essay.

Along with these stories on collecting, we also feature a conversation with the curators of an exhibition of S. H. Raza at Paris Centre Pompidou. It marks a return for the artist, who lived there for most of his working life until his death in 2016.

Read

DAG brings together five Indian abstractionists whose practice, largely away from India, was nevertheless rooted in their experiences and who infused new meaning and substance to the idea of the non-representational in its upcoming exhibition, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’. Featuring Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi as printmakers; Ambadas and Rajendra Dhawan as canvas painters whose language expressed their innermost personalities; Sohan Qadri as a colourist whose principal work was undertaken on paper—the exhibition is based on their philosophical questioning of art’s final goal, something that has been the catalyst for most artists in this genre. Opening on 3 April 2023 at DAG Mumbai, ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’ looks at the relationships between their work as their distinctive visual identities mark them apart from each other and illustrates their uniqueness by the cultural and political stance taken by each artist, the subjects they sought inspiration in, and in their processes of creating art.

Preview exhibition

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist. Breaking with the academic as well as the nationalistic convention of the time, Jamini Roy sought his inspiration from his social milieu, turning to terracotta crafts, scroll painters, patua artists, and the friezes of the Bishnupur temples for inspiration. His paintings imbibe the joie-de-vivre of the Santhal tribals and their simple way of life that he emulated with so much success in his practice, as this intimately curated exhibition shows us.

Preview exhibition