MAP Museum of Art and Photography Bangalore, Karnataka building architect, Modern Indian architecture images, South Asia visual culture
MAP Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore
post updated 13 February 2024
17 Feb 2023
MAP Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru, Karnataka, southern India
Design: Matthew & Ghosh
photo © Iwan Baan
MAP Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore Building
31 October 2022
Revised Opening Date In February 2023 For Map Museum Of Art And Photography In Bangalore
Design: Matthew & Ghosh
Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India, South Asia
Images by Matthew & Ghosh
Museum of Art and Photography Bangalore Opening
MAP Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore, India’s first new museum to present the full range of South Asia’s visual culture, will now open to the public on the weekend of 18/19 February 2023, rather than as previously announced in December 2022.
Abhishek Poddar, Founder and President of MAP, said: “Unavoidable delays on site mean that the completion of the museum will now be in early 2023, We are disappointed to make this announcement but for the benefit of artists, patrons and the public we want to ensure that the museum meets the ambitions we have all worked towards over the last two years. We look forward to welcoming the public with a weekend of celebrations on 18/19 February 2023.”
MAP is being developed to act as a beacon for South Asian arts and culture worldwide. Benefitting from extensive digital as well as physical content, it will be the first new public museum to open in India in a decade. MAP is the brainchild of philanthropist and collector Abhishek Poddar, who also gifted the founding collection, and is led by its Director, Kamini Sawhney.
MAP Museum of Art & Photography
Kasturba Road, Shanthala Nagar, Ashok Nagar, Bangalore, Karnataka 56001, India
www.map-india.org
Previously on e-architect:
12 July 2022
MAP Museum of Art and Photography – India’s first museum of South Asian visual culture
Architecture: Matthew & Ghosh
Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Images by Matthew & Ghosh
Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore Building
New Museum Opens In Bangalore, India’s ‘silicon Valley’
Global Access For The First Time To Full Range Of South Asia’s Visual Culture
Photograph by Jyoti Bhatt to be included in the MAP exhibition:
photograph : Jyoti Bhatt
Tuesday 12th of July 2022 – MAP Museum of Art and Photography, housed in a state-of-the-art building in South India’s capital city, Bangalore, known as India’s Silicon Valley, will open to the public on 11 December 2022.
MAP has been developed to act as a beacon for South Asian arts and culture worldwide. Benefitting from extensive digital as well as physical content, it will be the first new public museum to open in India in a decade. MAP is the brainchild of philanthropist and collector Abhishek Poddar, who also gifted the founding collection, and is led by its Director, Kamini Sawhney.
Speaking about MAP’s purpose, Museum Founder Abhishek Poddar said: “I believe we need MAP Museum of Art & Photography now because South Asian cultures represent the cultures of nearly a quarter of the world’s population and yet their stories have not been told. I hope that through the building, the collections and our online content, we can open up a dialogue with the world in this time when new narratives are being shaped.”
MAP’s collection of more than 60,000 works ranges widely across all periods and presents paintings, sculptures and graphics, alongside textiles, tribal art and memorabilia of India’s world-famous Bollywood industry. It deliberately blurs the boundaries between what is regarded as high art and the everyday creativity of the region’s communities. The photography collection is one of the most extensive in India with a particular focus on the period from the mid-nineteenth century, a turning point in the history of Britain’s colonial relationship with the region, right up to the present day.
photo : Jyoti Bhatt
Supported by Bangalore’s advanced technologies, the new museum is built on the foundations of a pioneering digital format, which was launched in 2020. This includes virtual exhibition tours, artists talks, virtual reality experiences, and a series of keynote conversations with international museum directors highlighting the collections. Alongside this, MAP Academy is the first online resource making available South Asian art histories, and offering online courses and access to its rapidly developing encyclopaedia of works from the region.
MAP’s landmark 44,000 square foot building, located in the heart of Bangalore’s museum quarter is designed by Bangalore based architects, Mathew & Ghosh, and includes four large galleries, a café and a rooftop restaurant, a 130 seat auditorium, a library housing extensive research material on Indian art and culture, freely available to students and researchers, and a conservation laboratory to carry out research and care of the collection.
Kamini Sawhney, Director of MAP, said: “From the very beginning we wanted MAP Museum of Art & Photography to be accessible to everyone. And to speak especially to a young generation whose visual experiences are so greatly influenced by the digital world. More than half of our population are under 25 years old; no country has more young people. We are fortunate to have been able to start from scratch thinking in an integrated way about how to approach audiences, whether they are in schools in Bangalore or in communities across the world. Audiences we couldn’t have dreamt of reaching through the building alone.”
MAP’s inaugural exhibitions and displays will provide a glimpse of the stories the collection tells:
• Visible/Invisible will explore the representation of women in art history from the Indian subcontinent. Highlights from this expansive survey, featuring over 130 works, include a tenth century sculpture of the Goddess Brahmani, a poster of the film Hunterwwali Ki Beti (1943), K.G. Subramanyan’s painting Woman in the Blue Room, (1981), Mrinalini Mukherjee’s Hemp sculpture Naag (1986), and Rampyari from Gauri Gill’s photographic series Balika Mela (2003-2010).
• Time and Time Again will be the first major retrospective of the photography of celebrated Indian artist, Jyoti Bhatt, drawn from one of MAP’s most important photographic archives, containing 1,000 prints and 60,000 negatives from Bhatt’s photographic body of work. Better known as a modernist printmaker and painter, the exhibition examines Bhatt’s journey into photography and celebrates the breadth of his practice.
• MAP will present the first solo show of the artist L N Tallur, who was born in the State of Karnataka, where MAP is located, and who now lives and works between India and South Korea.
• Rishis, a major installation by internationally acclaimed sculptor and Royal Academician, Stephen Cox, will be displayed in the Sculpture Courtyard at MAP.
• Sculptural commissions by renowned artists Arik Levy, together with two of India’s leading contemporary artists, Ayesha Singh and Tarik Currimbhoy, will be on display in key locations throughout the museum.
MAP Museum of Art & Photography
Kasturba Road, Shanthala Nagar, Ashok Nagar
Bangalore, Karnataka 56001, India
www.map-india.org
Facebook: @MuseumofArtandPhotography
Instagram: @mapbangalore
Twitter: @MAPBangalore / #MAPBangalore
South Asian culture represents the people, ideas and beliefs of the Indian subcontinent: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal and the Maldives, with a population of 1.7 billion people, nearly a quarter of the world’s total. About 600 million people, more than half India’s population, are under 25 years old, no country has more young people.
Abhishek Poddar, Founder – Trustee, MAP
Abhishek Poddar is a businessman and patron of the arts in India. As a prominent collector, he has amassed a significant collection of South Asian art, craft and antiquities, including modern and contemporary art and photography. He is the force behind MAP Museum of Art & Photography, where he serves as a trustee and to which he donated the initial leadership gift along with a substantial portion of the Poddar family’s art collection.
Poddar serves on the advisory committees of several cultural institutions including the Deccan Heritage Foundation, FIND (Foundation Inde-Europe de Nouveaux Dialogues or the India-Europe Foundation for New Dialogues) and the Lincoln Center Global Council, USA.
Kamini Sawhney, Director, MAP
Kamini Sawhney, Director of MAP, is leading the Museum of Art & Photography to create a new visitor experience for audiences in India. Prior to this, she led the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation in Mumbai, the modern and contemporary wing of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum), where she was the Chief Project Coordinator for the landmark exhibition India and The World: A History in Nine Stories, presented in 2018 with the British Museum and the National Museum, New Delhi.
In 2014, she was awarded the first Brook Fellowship at the Tate Modern. She has also been a journalist and television anchor with NDTV where she was bureau chief, Mumbai covering political and cultural events.
Previously on e-architect:
1 Feb 2022
Architecture: Matthew & Ghosh
Location: Bengaluru, Karnataka, southern India
Images by Matthew & Ghosh
MAP Museum of Art and Photography, India’s first museum of South Asian visual culture, will open in the global city of technology, Bangalore, in late 2022.
Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore
The museum will be housed in a state-of-the-art 44,000 square foot building, designed by the acclaimed Indian architectural practice Matthew & Ghosh, on a landmark site at the heart of Bangalore’s museums district.
The MAP collection includes more than 20,000 works. It covers the full range of South Asian visual culture: modern and contemporary art and sculpture, folk and tribal art, textiles, graphics and photography, with a particular focus on the period from the mid 19th century, a turning point in the history of Britain’s colonial relationship with the region, right up to the present day.
About 600 million people, more than half India’s population, are under 25 years old; no country has more young people. MAP, through advanced technology, cross art form collaborations and vivid storytelling, aims to transform the experience of museum going, making it exciting, accessible and relevant to the lives of younger generations. Entrance to the collection in the new building will be free to visitors, with a small charge for special exhibitions.
Launching initially online in December 2020 at the height of the pandemic, MAP already brings its collection to life through multiple pathways, from VR and AR to animation, video, livestreams, and online workshops.
Through its Museums Without Borders initiative, MAP has developed digital partnerships with international museums to share collections online. These include the British Museum, V&A, Horniman Museum, National Gallery Singapore, Museum of Fine Art Boston, Rhode Island School of Design, Morgan Library and Museum, Vitra Design Museum.
MAP is the brainchild of philanthropist and collector Abhishek Poddar. Born in Calcutta, he began collecting in the early 80s and now lives in Bangalore. He has gifted the founding collection to the museum and has brought together an international network of supporters and partners to raise the funds to develop the new building and create a long-term sustainable future for the museum.
Speaking about the plans for MAP, Abhishek Poddar said: “From a very young age, I have been on a long journey of discovery of art, one that has led to friendships with extraordinary artists and craftspeople. I wanted to share the fruits of that experience with others because I believe everyone has the right to learn and be inspired by creative ideas without boundaries.”
The Founding Director of MAP is Kamini Sawhney, previously the head of the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation in Mumbai, that served as the modern art wing of the Prince of Wales Museum. Bringing institutions together in collaborative projects has been one of her special skills enabling audiences in India the opportunity to experience exhibitions in collaboration with Tate, London; Foam, Amsterdam; the Duke University, Durham; and the KNMA, New Delhi. Sawhney was selected as one of the first candidates for the Brooks fellowship at Tate Modern, London, in 2014 in collaboration with the Delfina Foundation.
Kamini Sawhney said: “The MAP collection with its range and breadth across all forms of visual expression give us the chance to share our stories in depth in a unique way. Blurring the lines of division between ‘high art’ and ‘popular culture’, crossing art forms, we are determined that MAP will breathe new life into the museum experience and encourage a whole new generation to discover the joy of art.”
Architects Soumitro Ghosh and Nisha Mathew formed Mathew & Ghosh Architects in 1995. The firm has been the recipient of numerous Indian as well as international awards, such as the World Architecture Community Award, A+D & CERA Architecture Award, TRENDS Award for Architecture & Design and EDIDA. Their works in Bangalore include Freedom Park (2011) , the transformation of the Old Central Jail into an urban Park of Possibilities; the National Martyrs Memorial (2013), dedicated to the memory of those who gave their lives for the country since independence in 1947; and Cinnamon (2013), a lifestyle store housed in a transformed colonial building dating from 1892. MAP will be their first museum building.
Commenting on the design of the building, Soumitro Ghosh said: “Museums today are about public engagement and space. We see our responsibility as architects to give complete foreground to art in all possible ways. Lightness of design and the freedom for light to shape spaces are key characteristic in all our works. For MAP, the issue of accessibility, rarely prioritized in public buildings in India, is important and so the physical space is designed in such a way as to be exceptionally accessible and inclusive.”
Design: Matthew & Ghosh – http://mathewghosh.com/
Images: Matthew & Ghosh
MAP Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore images / information received 010222
Location: Bangalore, Karnataka, India, southern Asia
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