Collaborations
Every year, IFA collaborates with archives and museums across the country to implement projects through an open call for proposals. This is done in partnership with the host institutions.
We have collaborated with the following museums and archives in the past few years:
2023-2024:
Zapurza Museum of Art and Culture (ZMAC), Pune, is a not-for-profit art initiative under PN Gadgil Art and Culture Foundation led by Mr Ajit Gadgil. Borne out of Mr Gadgil’s personal collection, ZMAC has objects ranging from rare pieces of jewellery, paintings by traditional and contemporary artists, textiles, lithograph prints by Raja Ravi Varma, a collection of miniature paintings, manuscripts, everyday objects, and a range of ephemera.
The Cinema Resource Centre (TCRC), Chennai, is a not-for-profit public archive of Indian cinema designed to enable research on the visual and audio-visual cultural artefacts produced by Indian films over the last 80 years, especially those made in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada. The collection at TCRC have been sourced from collectors, film producers, technicians, artistes, and fans. The materials range from film posters, lobby cards, song books, long-playing (LP) records, literature and review pieces on cinema, and thousands of film stills.
Ever-Living Museum, Shillong, is a private initiative owned and curated by Mr Kyntiewbor War. It is nestled in the village of Mawshbuit, and the collections and artefacts on display reflect the dedication of Mr War’s effort to preserve the region’s material culture and the priceless contributions of well-wishers. The diverse collections, from cultural artefacts of the various indigenous communities of the region, Stone collection and hundreds of native plants and unique flowers, allow us a glimpse into the culture of the region and its people.
Bastion Bungalow, Fort Kochi, is a historical monument that epitomises the varied poly colonial histories that inform Kochi’s past. Spread over about 10 galleries, the museum broadly covers a long history of the region such as: commercial and sea trade routes of ancient Kerala; ancient ports of Kerala, with references about them like Muziris Papyrus Scrolls, Ganeza Collections etc; trade and commercial relations with foreigners; ancient maps including the Tabula Peutingeriana; details about flora and fauna of the region from the 17th-century botanical treatise Hortus Malabaricus, and much more.
2022-2023:
Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP), Pondicherry, is a Franco-Indian research institute committed to the creation and stewardship of research archives across disciplines. Inaugurated in March 1955, the IFP operates under the joint supervision of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the CNRS, undertaking research in Indology, Social Sciences, Ecology and Geomatics with a strong focus on interdisciplinary collaborations. The archival collections at IFP have incubated new questions and inquiries, and challenged the idea of archives being frozen in time.
Queer Archive for Memory, Reflection and Activism (QAMRA) Archival Project at NLSIU Bengaluru has materials that do not consist of stand-alone collections but are interconnected through the people who formed the queer movement. The collections contain raw video footage, photographs, newspaper clippings in multiple languages, legal documents, personal artefacts, and memorabilia of queer communities from the late 1980s to the early 2000s.
Bihar Museum, Patna, was inaugurated in 2015, with the central focus being the people of the state. It is built from the collections of the historical Patna Museum in the same city and houses artefacts from the region, aiming to make history accessible to its community and others. The museum is dedicated to indigenous arts, crafts and performing arts of the various regions of Bihar and intends to create a lasting educational impact on the children of Bihar and other visitors.
2021-2022:
Star of Mysore, launched in 1978, is a local English evening newspaper from Mysuru and is the only ‘subscribed’ eveninger in the country. Founded by KB Ganapathy and the late CP Chinnappa, the paper is published by the Academy Newspapers Pvt Ltd, Mysuru. The archive has copies of the physical newspapers printed from the late 1970s and digital copies of the online version.
The SL Bhatia History of Medicine Museum, Library & Archives, Bangalore, opened in 1974 and is housed in the first floor of the Museum Block in St John’s Research Institute. Named after Major General Sohan Lal Bhatia (1891-1982), the first Emeritus Professor of the Department of the History of Medicine in St John's Medical College, the museum brings alive the significant phases of the journey of medicine through a collection of medical instruments, models, photographs, paintings, and rare medical books.
The Museum of Christian Art (MoCA), Goa, was set up in 1994 in the Seminary of Rachol, in collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal and the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), New Delhi. The museum was later relocated in 2001 to the Convent of Santa Monica, in the vicinity of the UNESCO World Heritage site in Old Goa. It has a unique collection of objects that reflects the rich and pluralistic history of Goa.
2020-2021:
The Victoria Memorial Hall (VMH), Kolkata, was opened to the public in 1921. The brainchild of Lord Curzon, the then viceroy of India, it was dedicated to Queen Victoria. Known as The Taj of the Raj, the monument was immediately recognised as one of the finest examples of Indo-British art and architecture after it was completed. It has a collection of 28,394 artefacts and textual archival material encapsulating the history of the Indian subcontinent, beginning from 1650 AD.
The People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) is both a living journal and an online archive to record and bring to national focus the labour, livelihoods, languages, art, crafts, histories and cultures of rural Indians. It covers the complexities of rural India, with 833 million people, 780 languages, multiple cultures and unrivalled occupational diversity through video, still photo, audio and text articles.