Ancient Worlds Project

In 2021, CSMVS joined the Getty Foundation to engage in a ten-year project, Ancient Worlds Now – A Future for the Past to promote a truly global understanding of antiquity under the project. CSMVS has signed an MOU with the Getty Foundation as its India partner for the prestigious Collection Sharing Program which intends to promote a truly global understanding of antiquity, for the public. The India participation chapter will focus on presenting this global view of human history in a re-imagined Ancient Worlds Gallery (AWG), using the permanent collections at CSMVS and additions via long-term and shorter-term loans from a range of other Indian sources. Ancient World Gallery would emphasise the story of human achievement in a collective manner that shall not only embrace our similarities but also value the differences that mark our societies. The gallery, in its main educational endeavour, will enable and empower young people to ask questions about human histories and develop a scientific, inclusive and progressive temperament on understanding the past.

A Passage to Asia: 25 Centuries of Exchange between Asia and Europe

This exhibition serves as a testimony to the historic, commercial and political networks that developed over centuries between Europe and Asia, both on land and sea. It illustrates continued mobility and longstanding cultural exchanges between the two continents, reminding us of the importance of the relations between Europe and Asia . The digital exhibition presents a selection of objects from an exhibition that was organised in Brussels, back in 2010.
Click here to view the digital exhibition.
Click here to know more about the project.

The Mewar Ramayana

The Ramayana is perhaps one of the most popular texts from the country , full of poignant moments and fascinating characters. The Mewar Ramayana, commissioned by Maharana Jagat Singh, ruler of Mewar, Rajasthan, in the middle of the 17th century, is the finest copy of the epic. It is particularly striking for its heavily illustrated pages, being the most heavily embellished of the several manuscripts that survive. CSMVS worked in partnership with The British Library, London and other public institutions in India to reunify the Mewar Ramayana manuscript digitally for the first time in almost 200 years.
Click here to view the manuscript

Bristol: The bigger Picture

Since 2006 the British Museum and UK partner museums have welcomed museum professionals from across the globe to share skills and knowledge, discuss museums on an international scale and create a network of inspired museum professionals. Celebrating the programme’s 10th anniversary in 2015, CSMVS hosted ITP fellows and programme partners for a conference Creating Museums of World Stories where attendees, divided in groups were asked to brainstorm and debate new forms of ‘encyclopaedic’ displays presenting familiar local and national histories in the context of global stories.
One group began to think about Bristol as a global city and how their own cultures and experiences were similar or different to the citizens of Bristol. They began to examine how national and international stories are interconnected, through the lens of material culture.
Bristol: The bigger Picture is an outcome of this discussion and resultant presentation. The final output is a collaborative online exhibition by representatives from Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Bristol Museums, the British Museum, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Kitale Museum, National Museum Kaduna, National Museum New Delhi.

Celebrating Ganesha

This exhibition explores the imagery and symbolism associated with Ganesha, the elephant headed god. It places the worship of the deity across South Asia in its larger cultural context, and retells some of the most popular stories associated with the popular figure

This exhibition was a realisation of a proposal for a temporary exhibition with similar themes, submitted by Ms. Manisha Nene as part of the International Training Programme (in 2011) in the British Museum’s Room 3 Asahi Shimbun Displays.

DAI, Kuwait Conservation Project

CSMVS and Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah (DAI), Kuwait have been combining efforts towards the conservation of select objects from the Al-Sabah Collection. The same shall be fulfilled in two phases following agreements signed in 2017 and 2019. Under the understanding, conservators from CSMVS along with the Chief Conservator, Anupam Sah, make visits to Kuwait and work in efficient tandem with the DAI art conservators and collection care team for the conservation of metal and paper objects.

Conservation of The Indica Collection at Kupferstich Kabinett, SKD

The Kupferstich-Kabinett at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, houses two convolutes of Indian miniatures categorised separately as ‘The Indica Collection’. In a joint project, art conservation specialists from the CSMVS Museum Art Conservation Centre helped conserve select miniature paintings at Dresden in the year 2015. In continuation of this intellectual partnership, the CSMVS along with SKD and Goethe Institut, Mumbai, organised a series of workshops and symposiums on Indian miniatures at various sites including New Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

Sword of Damocles Conservation-Restoration Project

A neo-classical oil painting by French artist Antoine Dubost, Sword of Damocles, from the European paintings collection of CSMVS, was conserved in partnership with The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Click here to learn more about the collaboration.

The CSMVS-Southeast Asia Initiative

To broaden the scope of the Museum’s interaction with its neighbouring countries and strengthen ties with their cultural institutions, the CSMVS announced its Southeast Asia Initiative in 2018. Under the scheme, the Museum annually invites a scholar from a Southeast Asian country to deliver a public lecture at the CSMVS, exploring the historical and cultural connections between the two countries, and possibilities of collaboration. This initiative intends to encourage collaborative projects, including mutual exchange of educational, academic and research programmes, workshops, symposiums, exhibitions.