Call for Application: Two Museum Fellowships at National Museum, Delhi (CLOSED)
India Foundation for the Arts
in collaboration with
National Museum, New Delhi
invites applications for
Two Museum Fellowships
at the
Painting Department & Decorative Arts Department
Application deadline: Extended to October 28, 2014
India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) in collaboration with the National Museum, New Delhi, invites applications for two Museum Fellowships, each for a period of 8 to 10 months, to support curators, art historians and visual and performing artists to engage with select collections from two sections of the National Museum - the Painting & the Decorative Arts Departments respectively. The intention is to give applicants the opportunity to engage with the collections in innovative and original ways and to re-present this through a new framework. The exhibitions and other possible outcomes (publication/performance) that will evolve from this research at the end of 10 months will be presented at the National Museum, New Delhi in October/November 2015.
IFA’s Museum Fellowships have been initiated with the two-fold objective of providing practitioners with an opportunity to generate new, critical and creative approaches to public engagement with collections in museums; and energising museums as spaces for dialogue and discourse.
About the Painting Department: The Painting Department at the National Museum, New Delhi has one of the most prestigious and largest collections of miniature paintings in the world, with works ranging from 999 AD to those from the 19th century. These miniature paintings that cover a span of nine hundred years also cover a plurality of styles ranging from early Jain style, indigenous styles to Company School paintings.
For this Fellowship, the Painting Department will make available a selection of Pahari Ragamala paintings for curatorial interventions. Ragamala paintings are a series of illustrative paintings from medieval India that are based on the ‘Ragamala’ (Garland of Ragas), that depict the myriad Indian musical modes or Ragas. This kind of practice, where one art form is represented in another, is particularly unique to India. The Ragamala paintings are a classic example of the amalgamation of art, poetry and classical music; they reveal the deep and intertwined relationships between the literary, fine and performing arts that existed in medieval India. This Fellowship will give the practitioner the opportunity to look at and interpret these visually rich paintings from a contemporary context.
About the Decorative Arts Department: This section has more than 9000 objects covering a time span of more than four hundred years, from the 17th to the 21st century. The Decorative Arts Collection comprises of a large number of artifacts that have been crafted for daily, ceremonial and religious uses from a variety of materials like ivory, jade, ceramic, wood, metal, glass, textile, costume, etc.
For this Fellowship, the National Museum will make available the large collection of saris in the Decorative Arts Department. The saris come from various parts of India and are representative of the many unique techniques of the regions that include weaving, printing, painting and embroidery on cotton and silk materials. This Fellowship will give the practitioner the opportunity to research the idea of the ‘sari’ as an object that bridges many worlds and disciplines - history, geography, trade, ideology, identity, culture, amongst others - and think of innovative ways of presenting this traditional garment in the globalised world of today.
For more information on the background and history of the National Museum, log on to their website http://www.nationalmuseumindia.gov.in
For more information about the collections that will be available for curatorial intervention in each department, contact the curators of each department:
The Painting Department – Dr. Vijay Kumar Mathur at drvkmathurnmnd@gmail.com
The Decorative Arts Department - Dr. Anamika Pathak at apathak.nm@gmail.com
About the Fellowship
- Applicant profile: We seek applications from curators, art historians and visual and performing artists with previous curatorial experience and a strong interest in museum collections. Practitioners who are Indian nationals or have been a resident of India for five or more years are eligible to apply.
- Financial assistance and other support: Each fellowship provides an honorarium of Rs 2,00,000 for the duration of 10 months. The selected practitioners will work closely with the curators of the Painting Department and the Decorative Arts Department of the National Museum. A separate budget will be provided for the final outcome.
Important dates:
The deadline for receiving applications has been extended to October 28, 2014
Shortlisted candidates will be informed by second week of November, 2014
Interviews with shortlisted candidate are expected to take place by December 10, 2014 at National Museum, New Delhi.
The Fellowship will commence in December, 2014 for a period of 10 months
Application Process
Your application must include:
- A letter of interest explaining how you would benefit from this Museum Fellowship. Please identify aspects of your practice that you think will be honed and further developed during the course of the Fellowship.
- A brief description of a project you have been involved with either as a curator, arts practitioner or researcher. The description would include the vision, the approach, the processes and the outcomes that have resulted from the project. Please include documentation of the project, which could include 6 to 8 scanned or printed images with titles and date, DVD (max 4 minutes), catalogues, artworks, performances, or reviews;
- Your curriculum vitae.
Please address any queries to suman@indiaifa.org or call +91-80-2341 4681 / 82
Please post the required documents to IFA in an envelope marked ‘Museum Fellowship: IFA & National Museum, New Delhi’ by October 28th, 2014.
Museum Fellowship: IFA & National Museum, New Delhi
India Foundation for the Arts
'Apurva', Ground Floor,
No. 259, 4th Cross, RMV 2nd Stage, 2nd Block
Bangalore - 560 094