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DAG Museum’s annual festival ‘The City as a Museum’ attempts to explore the various archives, communities and artistic traditions that cohere around the life of a city. Put together, they tell different stories about the city across time and space, from the point of view of neighbourhoods, collections and institutions, but not just limited to those either.

In order to learn more about this unique programme that seeks to explore heritage outside the walls of a traditional gallery or museum, read on!

The Devi or the female power in Hindu mythology appears in various avatars in our everyday lives—as idols during the puja, on covers of magazines, product labels, calendars and posters. The modern history of visualising the Devi goes back to naturalistic depictions in oil paintings by the Early Bengal artists, which were surpassed in popularity and fame by Raja Ravi Varma and his studio. His representation, however, was regarded as too human-like by artists of the Bengal School in the early twentieth century, who created idealised forms based on a synthesis of classical visual traditions. In the twentieth century, we find artists responding to distinctive traits of the goddess to portray specific aspects of her power, or to convey the artist's own relationship with divinity. Few artists who have turned to Hindu myths have been able to escape the temptation to interpret the female power in their own way, and the diversity in style, medium, and mood is a testament to that.

William Hodges (1744-97) was a pioneer in more ways than one. He was the first British landscape painter to visit India, and to portray scenery across the whole breadth of the Gangetic plain. As a writer, he gave the first detailed descriptions of numerous historic Indian buildings, and he theorised about the origins and evolution of Indian architectural design. His art illustrates his exploration into terrain which—in its breadth and scope—was at the time almost as unfamiliar to Indian as to Western eyes.

Photographer Nemai Ghosh has been the quintessential Satyajit Ray biographer through his decades-long close association with the master filmmaker. Over a lifetime of work, he has built up a vast and valuable photographic archive, now housed at DAG.

Among all attempts by foreign artists to present a complete view of India, none is so focused on people as the work of François Baltazard Solvyns, who lived in Calcutta for a decade starting in 1791. While picking up odd jobs, he embarked on an ambitious project to produce a comprehensive survey of ‘the manners, customs, and dresses, of the Hindus’. The first edition contained 250 hand-coloured etchings and was published by Solvyns between 1796 and 1799.

India’s Rockefeller Artists showcases iconic works of the Indian painters and sculptors who travelled to the US on philanthropic grants from the JDR 3rd Fund (1963–1979) and later through the Asian Cultural Council. These artists were exposed to American art and shared their own learnings and experiences through these enriching cultural exchanges. The show examines how and why these artists were selected; their relationships with each other and the American art milieu; the impact of the experience on their work; and the creation of a community of Rockefeller artists.

A capacity building workshop for teachers on crafting museum-learning experiences for students at the historic house museum of the Tagore family. The workshop will focus on tools that can help make school visits to heritage sites more interactive and engaging.

Pebet is a ‘phunga wari’, a type of traditional fireside story told to Manipuri children by their grandparents. Directed by the renowned theatre practitioner Heisnam Kanhailal and performed first in 1975, it subverts the familiar icon of the bird and the cat to comment on political and cultural indoctrination.

An intimate evening at the home of the artist Shanu Lahiri, featuring stories about the family collection and archive told by a family member, and looking at the close-knit world of Calcutta’s creative community post-independence.