A Museum · New Delhi, India
National Gallery of Modern Art
The Deep Dive
The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) is India's premier institution for modern and contemporary art, operating under the Ministry of Culture with its principal site in New Delhi and branches in Mumbai and Bengaluru. The Delhi gallery was formally inaugurated on 29 March 1954 by Vice-President Dr. S. Radhakrishnan in the presence of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, fulfilling a vision first proposed in 1938 by the Delhi-based All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society and further debated at a 1949 Calcutta art conference attended by Nandalal Bose and Jamini Roy. It occupies Jaipur House, a butterfly-shaped, domed palace built in 1936 for the Maharaja of Jaipur by architect Sir Arthur Blomfield, sited near India Gate on Rajpath. The Mumbai branch opened in 1996 inside the 1911 Cowasji Jehangir Hall (designed by George Wittet) in Colaba, while the Bengaluru branch opened in 2009 in the century-old Manikyavelu Mansion on Palace Road after a lengthy restoration. Together the three sites trace the evolution of Indian art from around 1857 to the present, spanning Company painting, the Bengal School, and post-independence modernism. NGMA remains the country's foremost public custodian of modern Indian art and a key venue for major retrospectives and loans to international exhibitions.
Highlights
- ∞Housed in Jaipur House, a 1936 butterfly-shaped domed palace by Sir Arthur Blomfield, with roughly 12,000 square metres of exhibition space in Delhi
- ∞Holds one of the largest public collections of Amrita Sher-Gil's work, including Bride's Toilet (1937) and Sleep (1933)
- ∞Mumbai branch occupies the 1911 Cowasji Jehangir Hall in Colaba, funded by philanthropists Cowasji Jehangir, Jacob Sassoon and Currimbhoy Ibrahim and designed by George Wittet
- ∞Bengaluru branch occupies the century-old Manikyavelu Mansion, restored and opened to the public in 2009
- ∞Collection spans Company paintings, Kalighat and Tanjore schools, the Bengal School, and modernists such as M.F. Husain and F.N. Souza
- ∞Early acquisitions were anchored by 161 works by Amrita Sher-Gil, donated by her family, forming the core of the founding collection
- ∞Operates under India's Ministry of Culture as the country's principal Institution of National Importance for modern art
Notable works
- Bride's Toilet, Amrita Sher-Gil (1937)
- Sleep, Amrita Sher-Gil (1933)
- My Mother, Abanindranath Tagore (unknown)
- Various works, Raja Ravi Varma (19th century)
- Various works, Jamini Roy (20th century)
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Own the masterpiece the museum guards. Every work held by National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, India that we recreate is finished by hand on archival canvas, numbered as a strictly limited Heirloom edition and built to be inherited — from ₹50,000, delivered across India with white-glove care.