Of museums, mohallas, and memories: 'The City as a Museum' explores Delhi as landscape of learning

Of museums, mohallas, and memories: 'The City as a Museum' explores Delhi as landscape of learning

New Delhi, The second edition of DAG's art and heritage festival 'The City as a Museum' travels across the national capital's art schools, academies, museums, libraries and neighbourhoods to explore the city as a landscape of learning and knowledge-production that continues to shape its communities, identities, and culture.

Of museums, mohallas, and memories: 'The City as a Museum' explores Delhi as landscape of learning

The festival, which began on September 12, explores the layered histories of Delhi with exhibitions, talks, walks, workshops, and performances across the city's rich cultural map and its interconnected sites.

"With this second edition in Delhi, we turn to the city's own remarkable histories of learning and knowledge-making, revisiting historic institutions, modern centres of learning, libraries, community spaces, and the streets themselves.

"Following the overwhelming response to our first edition here, we are delighted to continue this journey with Delhi's residents, and to keep asking, as we have in every city: where does learning truly happen, and who gets to shape the knowledge a city holds of itself?" Ashish Anand, MD and CEO of DAG, said in a statement.

Among this edition's highlights is "Vision and Landscape: Aquatints of India by Thomas Daniell and William Daniell" exhibition at Bikaner House.

According to the art gallery, the exhibition features the complete and rare set of 142 aquatint prints collectively known as "Oriental Scenery" that represent the single-largest project by English artists to depict Indian architecture and landscape.

Depicting their extensive travels in India between 1786 and 1793, the aquatint prints by Thomas Daniell and his nephew William Daniell take the viewer on the journey the duo took across the country.

Curated by Giles Tillotson, SVP, DAG, the exhibition showcases the India that the duo saw, from Calcutta, across the Gangetic plain to Delhi; then up into the hills of Garhwal, before retracing the route back via Lucknow to Calcutta; then setting out from Madras through Tamil Nadu; and finally to Bombay, to explore the rock-cut temples of western India.

"Vision and Landscape" has been assembled on the basis of the original six volumes, each with twenty-four prints.

"A complete set such as this is extremely difficult to find and this is only the second time that it is being collectively shown in Delhi," Anand said.

The gallery, in collaboration with the College of Art, has also put together an exhibition spanning the 1950s to the 1990s. "Matrix and Mould" revisits the institution's experiments in printmaking and sculpture while tracing a dialogue across generations of faculty and students.

The exhibition features artists including Jagmohan Chopra, Manjit Bawa, Shobha Broota, Gogi Saroj Pal, Kanchan Chander, Anupam Sud, Somnath Hore, Biman Bihari Das, B C Sanyal and Shukla Sawant.

An illustrated talk and panel discussion by Ananda Moy Banerji and Shukla Sawant on September 15 explored the 1970s and '80s at the College of Art when experimental teaching and rigorous studio practice, under the printmaking department's eminent professors, shaped a new generation of artists just as the analogue world was about to meet the digital.

The college's printmaking department organised a collagraph printmaking workshop, conducted by artist Santosh Jain, exploring how texture is composed through layered, mixed-media surfaces to create richly tactile prints.

The festival traces a wider history of how knowledge is produced, transmitted and encountered by bringing together historians, artists, educators, scholars and cultural practitioners.

In a walkthrough on Thursday at the Baba Baghel Singh Museum, artist Arpana Caur and historian Kanika Singh explored how Sikh heritage museums articulate the community's presence in the city and national memory, followed by a visit to Caur's Academy of Fine Arts and Literature.

Social activist Rachit and the DAG Museums Team led a "sensory exploration" through the neighbourhood of Jamia Nagar on Friday using poetry to trace its formative history, and "the fractures fomented through the politics of contemporary urban planning".

Urban studies scholar Ghazala Jamil, editor Jamal Kidwai and scholar Anab Naiyer will explore the history of Jamia Millia Islamia and its neighbourhood on September 19 through varied registers, such as the art of poetic lamentation, memories of student movements, and a periodical that promoted arts and crafts-based education for the nation.

On September 20, historians Sudeshna Guha and Amar Farooqui will explore the history and archaeological remains of the 14th-century Hauz Khas madrasa, established under Firuz Shah Tughlaq, on a field visit, revisiting how educational spaces interact with urban imageries.

The festival will also feature a storytelling session at The Community Library Project in Khirkee Extension on September 21, "creating space for education and collective engagement beyond conventional institutions".

A walkthrough of the modern art collection at Nizamuddin's Ghalib Academy with art writer Kamayani Sharma and secretary of the Academy Aqil Ahmad will explore artworks commissioned in the 1960s to respond to Ghalib's verses.

The festival will come to a close on September 25 at the Ghalib Academy in Nizamuddin with art writer Kamayani Sharma exploring a collection of Indian and Pakistani modernists that complicates territorial categories shaped by Partition.

A special performance by Rene Singh and historian Rana Safvi will further explore the intersections of literary culture, neighbourhood, memory and public gathering following a visit to the historic Chausath Khamba complex adjacent to the Academy.

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