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The MAP Academy is initiating a new, yearlong proj

The MAP Academy is initiating a new, yearlong project on illustrated manuscripts and series commissioned across northern and central India during the Early Modern period. Led by scholar and historian Dr Neeraja Poddar, the project offers a rare opportunity for in-depth engagement with the visual histories of the subcontinent and the book arts.

We’re looking to hire a remote, part-time Researcher to join this ambitious initiative. The role involves identifying and examining folios from global public and private art collections and studying their origins, meanings, and contexts. The ideal candidate should have excellent research and writing skills, a strong grasp of formal communication, and the capacity to translate complex research into structured, accurate data and text. While guided by a senior scholar, the Researcher is expected to bring a critical perspective, initiative, and interpretive depth to their work.

Follow the link in our bio to learn more and apply.

From the classroom walls of 1920s Baroda to the ga

From the classroom walls of 1920s Baroda to the galleries of modern India, MF Husainʼs lifelong engagement with Gandhi charts an artistic journey that began in childhood. The child artists of Mumbaiʼs Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya (@manibhavanmumbai), who paint Gandhi each year on his birthday, share a creative kinship with Husain who first depicted the Mahatma in his youth.

In our upcoming MAP Academy Live, cultural historian Dr Sumathi Ramaswamy situates this early encounter within a wider lineage of young artists who have reimagined Gandhi over the years at the Mani Bhavan.

Register for the session on December 11, 2025 at 7:00 pm (IST) via Zoom.

About the Speaker
Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History at Duke University, USA. She has published on language politics, gender studies, spatial studies and the history of cartography, visual studies and the modern history of art, and more recently, digital humanities and the history of philanthropy in modern India. Her most recent monograph on Gandhi is titled ʻGandhi in the Gallery: The Art of Disobedience’ (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2020).

Book covers by Indian designers embody a layered v

Book covers by Indian designers embody a layered visual language, where cultural nuances, colonial design legacies, and global trends converge.

Bhavna Bhasin explores how designers, publishers, and artists in India navigate the pluralistic political and cultural landscape of the subcontinent to create enticing book covers — and what this means to the visual future of storytelling.

Follow the link in our bio to read more.

In childrenʼs drawings, Gandhi often mirrors the

In childrenʼs drawings, Gandhi often mirrors the familiar figure of grown-ups, yet each child reimagines him anew.

For decades, these paintings, made at Mani Bhavan Gandhi Sangrahalaya, Mumbai, have responded to themes both playful and profound. Together, they form a rare visual record of how Indiaʼs youngest citizens have pictured the national leader.

Through her latest digital archival project, ʻB is for Bapu: Gandhi in the Art of the Child in Modern India,ʼ Dr Sumathi Ramaswamy creates a space where art, memory, and history converge.

Join us for our upcoming MAP Academy Live, as she explores the problematic of Gandhi and the child and what childrenʼs artworks reveal about the figure today.

The session will be held on December 11, Thursday, at 7:00 pm IST via Zoom. Register via the link in our bio.

About the Speaker
Sumathi Ramaswamy is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History at Duke University, USA. She has published on language politics, gender studies, spatial studies and the history of cartography, visual studies and the modern history of art, and more recently, digital humanities and the history of philanthropy in modern India. Her most recent monograph on Gandhi is titled ʻGandhi in the Gallery: The Art of Disobedience’ (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2020).

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