National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi

The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi is the premier institution of its kind in India. It is run and administered as a subordinate office to the Department of Culture, Government of India. The NGMA has two branches one at Mumbai and the other at Bengaluru.

About NGMA

The idea of a national art gallery to germinate and bear fruit was first mooted in 1949. It was nurtured carefully by Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru and Maulana Azad, sensitive bureaucrats like Humayun Kabir and an active art community. Vice-president Dr. S. Radhakrishanan formally inaugurated the NGMA in the presence of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and artists and art lovers of the city on 29^th March 1954 with the objective of promoting modern art in the country. The choice of Jaipur House, one of the premier edifices of Lutyens’ Delhi, signified the envisaged high profile of the institution.

The gallery is a repository of the cultural ethos of the country and showcases the changing art forms through the passage of the last hundred and fifty years starting from about 1857 in the field of Visual and Plastic arts. Notwithstanding some gaps and some trivia, the NGMA collection today is undeniably the most significant collection of modern and contemporary art in the country today.

Aims and Objectives

The principal aims and objectives of the National Gallery of Modern Art are:

• To acquire and preserve works of modern art from 1850s onward.
• To organize, maintain and develop galleries for permanent display.
• To organize special exhibitions not only in its own premises but in other parts of the country and abroad.
• To develop an education and documentation centre in order to acquire, maintain and preserve documents relating to works of modern art.
• To develop a specialized library of books, periodicals, photographs and other audiovisual materials.
• To organize lectures, seminars and conferences, and to encourage higher studies and research in the field of art history, art criticism, art appreciation, museology and the inter-relations on visual and performing arts.

The foremost responsibility of the National Gallery of Modern Art is to ensure quality and to set and maintain standards of excellence. The aesthetic and educational purposes are not only defined in the aims and objectives of the National Gallery of Modern Art, but efforts are also being made so that they become implicit in its organization and pervade all its activities. The National Gallery of Modern Art helps people to look at the works of modern art with greater joy, understanding and knowledge by extending their relationship with our daily life and experiencing them as vital expressions of the human spirit.

So’Ham

The So’Ham is the first cultural media platform of the country under the banner of National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA). One of its kind, it is a platform to develop a dialog between NGMA, artists and art enthusiasts, aiming to build a wider interactive platform for all the voices. So’Ham is an attempt to connect to the universe of art and beyond. 

Useful Links

• NGMA Bengaluru
• NGMA Mumbai
• Virtual Galleries

Source: National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi