India's 10,000 years of art history on one platform: What is the open-access Encyclopaedia of Art?

India’s rich art history going back 10,000 years and spreading across forms, styles and inspirations is now available to all through Encyclopaedia of Art.

For the first time, art enthusiasts, historians, students can find a vast trove of information on Indian art on a single open-access online platform, created by Bengaluru-based Museum of Art & Photography (MAP), a private museum founded by art collector Abhishek Poddar.

According to Mint Lounge, the “one-of-a-kind compilation” offers information on mediums and themes such as textiles, photography, sculpture, painting, indigenous traditions and popular culture.

Here is everything you need to know about the Encyclopaedia of Art:

Launched on 21 April, the Encyclopaedia of Art from the Indian subcontinent showcases not just the evolution of art in the region but also highlights how ways of living and thinking have changed with time.

According to the BBC, the open-source repository allows anyone to view and read about an enormous collection of Indian paintings, photographs, living traditions, architecture and textiles.

The website currently has nearly 2,000 entries that are written by a team of more than 25 young Indian academics and art historians and peer-reviewed by experts.

The website itself is the brainchild of the museum’s latest educational project, the MAP Academy.

Ranging from 10,000-year-old cave drawings to the biggest contemporary names in art, the website even covers several artists who haven’t received mainstream recognition.

The platform offers not just blogs and articles but also online courses for those who are interested in all things arts.

“All of this, including the Encyclopedia, will be on the same site, and be interconnected. Say, if a course mentions a particular artist, the name will be hyperlinked to the entry in the Encyclopedia. We want the latter to be a foundational knowledge bank that continues to grow,” Gaskell said, as reported by the Mint Lounge.

With its all-encompassing content, the MAP Academy is also intent on telling a different, more inclusive history of art in the subcontinent.

For example, the team tried to ensure better representation of gender, region and community as it worked on articles on modern and contemporary art.

“While working on textiles, for instance, we realised we didn’t have enough material from regions around Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. So, we embarked on a research trip just for that,” says Gaskell.

“The aim is not only to have all of art history on a single platform in an easy-to-understand format, but also fill the gaps in the way it has been documented so far, by making it more regionally and gender diverse,” says Nathaniel Gaskell, the director of MAP Academy, as quoted by the BBC.

“It will take time to build something like this but we are ready to do it.” With inputs from agencies

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