The new gallery that has opened in the Humayun’s Tomb Museum complex, will display over 2000 artefacts and nearly 500 textiles between a century and 300 years old, on August 1. The collection was originally housed in the Sanskriti Kendra in Anandgram.
The Sanskriti Museum
The newly inaugurated Sanskriti Museum of Indian Textiles and Everyday Art, located within the Humayun’s Tomb Museum complex, has been established through a collaboration between the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC). The museum’s collection was donated to the IGNCA by Sanskriti Pratishthan in 2023.
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Hindustan Times reported that at least 100 pieces of items like pots, children’s toys, lamps, kitchen accessories, jewellery, hookahs and chillums, beetle boxes, farming implements, writing equipment, mendicants’ objects and portable shrines made from a variety of material, including brass, coconut shell, copper, silver, ceramic and leather, are on display.
“These objects were not used by aristocrats or rich people, but were part of the everyday lives of commoners. We had so much beauty and artistry even in common objects found in the house,” said Ratish Nanda, India CEO-AKTC.
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The museum will showcase more than 500 textile artefacts, with around 90 featured in its inaugural exhibition. These include traditional crafts such as Kalamkari, Ikat, Phulkari, Zardozi, Kashmiri embroidery and Jamdani. Among the highlights is a rare white cotton crochet pichwai, believed to have been created in East Germany during the 20th century.
Sanskriti Kendra and OP Jain
The collection was originally housed in the Sanskriti Kendra in Anandgram and was built by OP Jain, it is a 97-year-old Delhi-based paper merchant, during the course of his career. Jain wrote in the foreword to a book, Everyday Art of India (1984), that the Kendra allowed people a “sense of pride, and…a sense of being cultured.”
Jain also said that the transfer of collections from Sanskriti Kendra to IGNCA is significant because “it is rare for private collections to go to the government.”
FAQs
1) Who built the collection in the Sanskriti Kendra?
The collection in Sanskriti Kendra was originally built by OP Jain, a 97-year-old Delhi-based paper merchant.
2) How many artifacts and textiles are on display in the new museum complex at the Humanyun’s Tomb?
Over 2,000 artefacts and 500 textiles are on display in the newly inaugurated Sanskriti Museum of Indian Textiles and Everyday Art in the Humayun’s Tomb Museum complex.