तारागाउँ सङ्ग्रहालय | |
Established | 2014 |
---|---|
Location | Boudha, Kathmandu, Nepal |
Coordinates | 27°43′14″N85°21′22″E / 27.72048054°N 85.356247°E |
Type | Art museum |
Director | Roshan Mishra |
Curator | Niels Gutschow |
Architect | Carl Pruscha |
Owner | Taragaon Regency Hotel |
Website | taragaonmuseum |
The Taragaon Museum is a private museum located in Kathmandu. It is located in the northern part of the city near the Bouddhanath stupa. [1] It is situated on the ground of the Taragaon Regency hotel, which owns the museum. The museum is supported by the Saraf Foundation. The museum features a permanent collection in three of its building and a contemporary art gallery. [2]
The permanent exhibition is titled "ARCHIVING FOR THE FUTURE" which is a curated display that explores the juncture of time, architecture, and archives documented through memory and people and highlights the role of archiving in preserving and promoting our shared heritage for future generations.
The Nepal Architecture Archive (NAA), officially founded in 2016, is housed on the sprawling premises of the Taragaon Museum. This growing and versatile archive with rare photographs, books, surveys, blueprints, objects, and invaluable notes serves as readings of Nepal's fast-changing urban landscapes and cultural nuances. Documented over the years by numerous international and local visiting scholars and artists, the archive houses collected and donated material by over a hundred contributors whose research maps histories of varied architectural elements and materials for future understanding and documentation.
Niels Gutschow curated a collection of works by architects, anthropologists, artists, cartographers, engineers, photographers, planners, researchers, and advisors to the government for public viewing across the seven buildings of Carl Pruscha's Taragaon Hostel, converted into the Taragaon Museum in 2014. The fascinating architectural structures with their brick walls, niches, and large round windows proved to be a space that spurred curiosity in the direction of the architectural archive to understand Nepal's (primarily Kathmandu Valley) architectural landscapes and the changes it has undergone over the past few decades. The earlier exhibition display focused on academically highlighting photographs, etchings, maps, plans, and drawings. Taking a cue from these elements, this show of the permanent collection of NAA aims to open up access to a broader audience who will, over time, become the keepers and future contributors of the archive and the conveners of their museum, and their histories and futures at Taragaon Next.
To facilitate a refreshed vision of the Nepal Architecture Archive, the curatorial team envisioned looking at a broad overview of four primary themes across three galleries: People and Places (portraits, studio, and topography), Vernacular Architecture, Architectural Surveys, and Monuments (Stupas, chaityas, temples, and mandaps). The maps, photographs, objects, and ephemera that articulate these four themes are either originals or reprints of materials from the archive by scholars, researchers, and contributors who have spent years and some decades documenting the lives and landscapes of people and places they encountered. Each gallery offers various access points for visitors to the archive with their own stories and histories. While the display will remain for two years, there will be constant interventions and interactions within these gallery spaces by other artists as well as elements of the exhibition that will continue to evolve and change to encourage visitors to return. In addition, the exhibition offers modules for learning, interaction, engagement, and experience for children, students, scholars, and curious visitors through materials from the archive, immersive works, and programming that activates the spaces to grow knowledge and connect with the archive.
The Austrian-style brick structure was built as a hostel for artists and scientist in 1970s. Nepal started permitting foreign visitors in 1950s. The hostel was built to reflect the "Nepaliness" to the visitors. The land in which the hostel stands was acquired by His Majesty's Government in 1969. The land was transferred to the Nepal Women's Association. In 1970, Angur Baba Joshi, a prominent Nepalese scholar met Austrian architect Carl Pruscha, who served as a UN and UNESCO consultant to the Nepalese government. She then commissioned him to design the hostel. Joshi wanted to create a cultural village for artists in Nepal. [3] The construction began in 1974 and the entire complex was inaugurated on the 25 September 1974, in the presence of Queen Aishwarya Rajya Lakshmi Devi Shah. The style of the structure is a combination of Nepalese and Pruscha's European modernist architecture. [4]
In 1990 the Nepal Women's Association was abolished after the restoration of democracy in Nepal. In 1997, the hostel was abandoned. The property was later acquired by Arun Saraf, the owner of the adjacent Hyatt hotel. It was then renovated into a museum.
The museum covers an area of 35,000 sq. feet. [5] The museum exhibits 18th and 19th century photographs, watercolors and engravings, artist sketches, maps, plans, drawings and various other documentations in its permanent collection. [6] Besides its permanent collection, the museum also has a contemporary art gallery, event hall and two outdoor amphitheaters. [7]
The museum host various art related events and festivals. [8] The museum campus is also used for book release events and musical performance. The museum was one of the host of Kathmandu Triennale 2077 alongside the Patan Museum, Bahadur Shah Baithak, Nepal Art Council and Siddhartha Art Gallery. [9]
Kathmandu, officially Kathmandu Metropolitan City, is the capital and most populous city of Nepal with 845,767 inhabitants living in 105,649 households as of the 2021 Nepal census and approximately 4 million people in its urban agglomeration. It is located in the Kathmandu Valley, a large valley in the high plateaus in central Nepal, at an altitude of 1,400 metres.
The National Museum is a museum in Oslo, Norway which holds the Norwegian state's public collection of art, architecture, and design objects. The collection totals over 400,000 works, amongst them the first copy of Edvard Munch's The Scream from 1893. The museum is state-owned and managed by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture.
The Freer Gallery of Art is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. focusing on Asian art. The Freer and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and Sackler galleries house the largest Asian art research library in the country and contain art from East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Islamic world, the ancient Near East, and ancient Egypt, as well as a significant collection of American art.
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's largest and most inclusive collections of art, from the colonial period to the present, made in the United States. More than 7,000 artists are represented in the museum's collection. Most exhibitions are held in the museum's main building, the Old Patent Office Building, while craft-focused exhibitions are shown in the Renwick Gallery.
The Kathmandu Valley, also known as the Nepal Valley or Nepa Valley, National Capital Area, is a bowl-shaped valley located in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal. It lies at the crossroads of ancient civilizations of the Indian subcontinent and the broader Asian continent, and has at least 130 important monuments, including several pilgrimage sites for Hindus and Buddhists. There are seven World Heritage Sites within the valley.
The Anchorage Museum is a large art, history, ethnography, ecology and science museum located in a modern building in the heart of Anchorage, Alaska. It is dedicated to studying and exploring the land, peoples, art and history of Alaska.
National Museum, located at the base of Swayambhu, a sacred hill in the Kathmandu Valley, is the first Nepalese museum. Covering an area of approximately 50 Ropani, the museum comprises various buildings, gardens, and open spaces within its premises. Its primary function is to preserve and exhibit rare and valuable art treasures.
The Getty Research Institute (GRI), located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts".
Sachida Nagdev was an Indian painter based in central Indian town of Bhopal.
Yokohama Museum of Art, founded in 1989, is located in the futuristic Minato Mirai 21 district of the Japanese city Yokohama, next to the Yokohama Landmark Tower.
Kevin Bubriski is an American documentary photographer.
Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, is a premier museum of North India having collections of Gandharan sculptures, sculptures from ancient and medieval India, Pahari and Rajasthani miniature paintings. It owes its existence to the partition of India in August, 1947. Prior to the partition, much of the collections of art objects, paintings and sculptures present here were housed in the Central Museum, Lahore, the then capital of Punjab. The museum has one of the largest collection of Gandharan artefacts in the world.
Kurchi Dasgupta is an Indian painter, art critic, actor and translator. She currently lives between Kathmandu, Nepal and Kolkata, India.
The ancient and refined traditional culture of Kathmandu, for that matter in the whole of Nepal, is an uninterrupted and exceptional meeting of the Hindu and Buddhist ethos practiced by its highly religious people. It has also embraced in its fold the cultural diversity provided by the other religions such as Kirat, Jainism, Islam and Christianity.
The Patan Museum is a museum located in Patan, Lalitpur, Nepal. The museum falls under the UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. The Patan Museum was inaugurated in 1997 by Late King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah. The Patan Museum displays the traditional sacred arts of Nepal in an illustrious architectural setting. Its home is an old residential court of Patan Durbar, one of the royal palaces of former Malla Kings of the Kathmandu Valley. The royal palace was built in 1734, on the site of a Buddhist monastery. The museum quadrangle is known as Keshav Narayan Chowk.
The Binghamton University Art Museum is an art museum in Binghamton, New York within Binghamton University. Located on the second floor of the main Fine Arts Building on the campus, the museum's permanent collection includes over 3,500 works from various eras and of different media. It includes "paintings, sculpture, prints, photographs, drawings, glass, ceramic, metalwork, manuscript pages and textiles from Egypt, Greece, Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and pre-Columbian cultures." As of 2013, the University Art Museum began an initiative to expand the accessibility of the collection with the greater public and to heighten its commitment to education. The facility is not currently accredited.
Deepak Shimkhada is a Nepalese-American with a diverse professional background. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga, California, and has previously held visiting and adjunct positions at several U.S. universities, including Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University, California State University, Northridge, University of the West, and Claremont School of Theology. His teaching career began in 1980, and while he has retired from full-time teaching, he continues to teach Asian art part-time at Chaffey College.
Nepal Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) is the umbrella organization of Nepali artists, researchers and art critics, and an arts institution for research and for exhibitions. A museum in Kathmandu, in a neoclassical building from the 1930s, presents collections of both traditional and contemporary paintings and other works. It was formerly part of Nepal Academy. The Nepal Academy of Fine Arts has also published a number of books about art and Nepali artists.
Pramila Giri is a visual artist who has been living and practising in Norway since 1997. She practises in the mediums of sculpture and painting. During the initial years of her practice in the 1980s, Giri experimented with marble and resin, mediums that had not as yet been used in Nepal in the arts. Presently her work synthesises large-scale abstract sculptures with paintings that create an environment, and have a monumental effect on onlookers. Her sculptures are installed in significant sites in Nepal and abroad. In 1978, she was among a group of artists who represented Nepal in the Fourth Triennale - India. In 2019, she participated in "Nepal Art Now," a large-scale exhibition at Weltmuseum Wien, "the most extensive exhibition of modern and contemporary art from Nepal to date" according to the museum's press release.
Sheelasha Rajbhandari, is a Nepali visual artist and cultural organizer who was born in 1988 in Kathmandu. She completed her MFA from Tribuvan University in 2014. Her work examines alternative narratives through folk tales, oral traditions, myths, material culture, performances and rituals, and presents them as counterpoints to mainstream history and narratives. She often seeks to challenge social taboos and patriarchal discourses by focusing on women's struggles and celebrating their resilience. Her long-term research plans and artistic practice often synthesize knowledge and experiences gained as a result of individual and collective discourses. Rajbhandari is also a curator noted for her contributions to the Kathmandu Triennale 2077 and first Nepal Pavilion, at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2022. In 2013, she co-founded the art collective Artree Nepal alongside Hit Man Gurung, Subas Tamang, Mekh Limbu, and Lavkant Chaudhary.