Tab: Books

Celebrating Museum Collections is a unique publication of the proceedings of the one-day seminar held at the Bihar Museum, Patna,on June 27, 2019.26 museum professionals attended the seminar and the publication includes the reflections and responses of the 26 resource people to the Bihar Museum. Designed by the internationally acclaimed architect Fumihiko Maki, the Bihar Museum is recognised as one of the most important contemporary museums in the country.

Jal Jungle Jameen: The Living Traditions of Chhattisgarh is not just a visual diary about the arts and aesthetics of Chhattisgarh. Through the reading of the cultural artefacts, it dips its feet into the insights of the Indic wisdom and knowledge systems, which emanate from the understanding and awareness of the interiority of people living in the bowels of the earth, namely the ethnic communities of the State. This book opens a window to the thoughtful, sustainable and organic lifestyle that shapes the unbroken traditions of the intangible wealth not only of the forest but of the country itself. From medicine to food, from ancestor worship to celebrating the everyday joys of living in the dense forests, this comprehensive reading of the life, times and rituals opens a window to the inner world of the forest dwellers.

Flowers are part and parcel of our lives, from birth to death, as offerings, as blessings, as adornment, as medicine, as food and also as a sign of love and sharing. Over the years, with the critical readings of fragrances, we see how aromas can evoke memory, how they are responded to by different genders and how floral perfumes also become mediators of desire and pleasure. And it is through an exploration of the floral essence that new perceptions and interpretations of flowers can be read in the book. 

Body Sutra celebrates the body by capturing both its beauty and divinity in an artistic-cum-historical journey. The book is inarguably the definitive and a truly authoritative work on the literary and artistic representation of the body, and combines rare Indian literature with the most stunning visual documentation of the body ever. It traces the shifting patterns of the representations of the body through 5,000 years of history, from the ancient to the contemporary.

The book serves as a living document to the month-long photography exhibition Photosphere 2016. Sustainable development has its own constituency of thought in the Indian subcontinent. Since striving towards solutions was also key, five distinct and distinguished experts— Dr Ajay Mathur, Amba Jamir, Madhav Gadgil, Mike Pandey, Sunita Narain—from across the sphere of sustainable development have contributed their writing to the book.

The book is undoubtedly an important art historical document, the book serves as a catalogue for the 308 sculptures that are a part of the collections of the Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation (MMCF), Udaipur.

The book features Shoba Deepak Singh’s unerring eye to the world of music. It works closely on the heels of Theatrescapes and Dancescapes.

The book essays the 30 years journey of the visual archivist Shobha Deepak Singh in the theatre after post-Independence. The collection of photographs in the book is a parallel archive to the more academic readings of the theatre with a marvellous documentation of the passions, emotions and spectacle.

The book documents the 30 years passion of documenting dancers and dance productions by Shobha Deepak Singh. She can be called a rare active voice in the archiving of dance, capturing those essential movements that are ethereal and transient.

This book is a singular and personal attempt at untangling the various strands of the rich food culture and exploring the current state of Indian cuisine. Published by Cambridge University Press.