Viewing room

The past has a home in the future

Curated by Dr. Annapurna Garimella 7 November - 6 December 2024 New Delhi, the recently established capital of British India, was designed to have the most stylish, contemporary and central shopping complex, where the finest of goods would serve foreign and Indian elites. In 1936, Dhoomimal Dharamdas, a paper manufacturer and merchant of Chawri Bazar in Old Delhi along with their establishments, set up a store in the newly opened Connaught Place. It is in this setting that Ram Chander Jain, affectionately called Ram Babu, nurtured an art world, laying the foundation of Dhoomimal Gallery. This exhibition, for the first time, showcases Connaught Place as an important site in which politics and cultural production converged, offering both a synchronic and diachronic narrative of the place and people, especially through the story of Dhoomimal Gallery.
Structured in three consecutive sections, with archival imagery and artworks, and specially curated objects in textiles, ceramics, visual arts and sound, the exhibition merges the spirit of the place and its persistent creative discourse. Read more