On the 25th of January, 2025, as part of the outreach of Sarmaya’s ongoing exhibition High Seas, Open Roads, we hit the town for a Bombay Painters & Poets Crawl. Conceptualised and led by Saranya Subramanian, the crawl kicked off at Flora Fountain. The group wound their way through the alleys and bylanes of Fort,… Read more »
On 18th January 2025, we were delighted to welcome some excited kids at Sarmaya for our event ‘Map it Out’’. Sarmaya’s education team led them on a walkthrough of our exhibition ‘High Seas, Open Roads!’, where we explored how artists reflected on the world around them. Here the kids surveyed a wide range of artefacts… Read more »
On the 14th of January, 2025, as part of the outreach for Sarmaya’s exhibition High Seas, Open Roads Sarmaya’s Research & Curatorial Assistant Pooja Ashokkumar led a walk in Dharavi on the occasion of Pongal. The walk started bright and early for the group of twelve, by watching the Pongal (the traditional Tamil sweet dish) being… Read more »
Ira Mukhoty originally set out to research the French empire in India during the 18th century but found herself drawn instead to the fascinating world of Awadh’s nawabs and begums. Her book, The Lion and the Lily, delves into the history of this region and period through the prism of the global Franco-British wars. She… Read more »
We’re excited to be opening 2025 with our fourth show, and the first to be hosted at our archive in Fort.
“Hinduism’s encounter with the West and Christianity is a fascinating story.” Historian and best-selling author Manu S Pillai launched his book, Gods, Guns & Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity, with a talk at the Sarmaya archive in Fort, Mumbai on 7 December, 2024. He took questions from the audience after the Talk.… Read more »
The scene depicted in this artwork portrays the tail end of the downfall of the once mighty Portuguese empire in India
A film aboutby Sarmaya for an December 2024 show by Waswo x Waswo at the Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts
For our 40th issue of Spotlight, we’re revisiting a theme we first explored back in 2019: the magnificent beasts who have charmed us with their form and spirit over the ages.
Test yourself on the mythology, art, culture and food inspired by Lord Ganesha
Cleverly hidden in the design of a silver coin is the story of Mughal emperor Jahangir’s lifelong fascination with birds of prey
A third-generation ‘Bombay-Tamil’ narrates a personal history of Dharavi’s leather industry and its vanished ‘tholwadis’
All through 2024, explore the Sarmaya collection through the 12 sun signs of the zodiac. Updated every month, from Feb 2024 – Jan 2025
On 19 July 2024, Sarmaya organised a puppet-making workshop for the Kids for Tigers event by Sanctuary Asia at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai. This was our second collaboration with the conservation organisation. Over 60 students from various schools across the city participated in the workshop, which was inspired by… Read more »
Ancient Indian scripts hold the key to secrets from our past that still being unravelled today. Take our quiz learn about these rich texts
On 25 May, we hosted a full house for Saturdays at Sarmaya at our archive in Mumbai. Our guests enjoyed getting up close with contemporary art, archival photos and historical documents relating to the courtesans of India. It was a delighted group of art-lovers who gathered for this session, which included interactive activities that encouraged… Read more »
“These courtesans were artists who were carriers of the nation’s enormous history, creating cultural movements by their strokes and the turnings of their wrists. At the core of the institutionals values of courtesans lay a deeper, divine purpose of uplifting the mundane world of mortals, allowing them to envision the bigger picture.” Madhur Gupta on… Read more »
Inspired by a 150-year-old sepia photograph, a museum professional explores how to fill in the blanks of history through an anti-caste perspective
Take our quiz on forgotten, sidelined or destroyed monuments and acquaint yourself with an unseen India.
“In the beginning, many artists had an inhibition that acoustic technology, or later the microphone, could secretly siphon off all the goodness and power of their voice, just as ‘making soup out of meat and vegetables robs them of their nutrients!” Vidya Shah delivered a lecture for Sarmaya Talks on 26th April 2024, at Jaan Joss,… Read more »