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Arts at the Mittal Institute

The Mittal Institute’s Arts Program bridges South Asia’s artistic world with the intellectual and creative resources of Harvard University, offering various fellowships, research programs, and events.

 

 

Inside the Arts Program

Arts Report 2023-24 Cover Image

ARTS PROGRAM REPORT 2023-2024

The Mittal Institute’s yearly Arts Program Report highlights the incredible impact and accomplishments of the Institute’s various arts initiatives, which include fellowships, exhibitions, and events.

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VISITING ARTIST FELLOWSHIP

The Mittal Institute’s Arts Program offers fellowships to four mid-career artists from across South Asia through a competitive process and invites them to Harvard’s campus for two months. The artists are connected with Harvard faculty and students to support their research into social, political, cultural, and economic issues of the region through art.  

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DISTINGUISHED ARTIST FELLOWSHIP

The Distinguished Artist Fellowship, generously funded by Arts Advisory Council chair Dipti Mathur, brings senior artists from South Asia to Cambridge to enrich their future artistic work through the use of Harvard’s intellectual and creative resources.

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PERFORMING ARTS PROGRAM

Performing arts at the Mittal Institute are both a scholarly inquiry and a curatorial challenge. The Institute seeks to examine how classical and traditional South Asian music, dance, and theatre connect with contemporary audiences—within and beyond South Asia—and explore the intellectual, cultural, and artistic frameworks that shape their transmission and transformation.

Explore the program
Mapping Color in History Detail

THE STATE OF ARCHITECTURE IN SOUTH ASIA

The State of Architecture in South Asia is a multi-year research initiative anchored by the Mittal Institute and the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), supported by the South Asia Graduate School of Design Student Group and the Architecture Foundation, India. The project explores fundamental questions about the research and practice of architecture in South Asia, a region undergoing numerous transitions.

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Mapping Color in History Detail

MAPPING COLOR IN HISTORY

Mapping Color in History (MCH) is a digital research platform that brings together the scientific data drawn from existing and ongoing material analyses of pigments, especially in Asian painting, to enable historical research.

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PROGRAM FOR CONSERVATION OF CULTURE

This program addressed the lack of manpower and knowledge transfer that exists in South Asia’s cultural conservation. As a region with a rich history and cultural heritage, it is imperative to teach the next generation of conservationists, museum curators, and other experts how to effectively and safely preserve South Asia’s many heritage sites and works of art.

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Media and Resources

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Arts program publications

ARTS ADVISORY COUNCIL

PROGRAM TEAM & COLLABORATORS

Performing Arts Program

Performing arts at the Mittal Institute are both a scholarly inquiry and a curatorial challenge. The Institute seeks to examine how classical and traditional South Asian music, dance, and theatre connect with contemporary audiences—within and beyond South Asia—and explore the intellectual, cultural, and artistic frameworks that shape their transmission and transformation. Thus, the essential question of this program is: How do traditional South Asian performing arts evolve and remain resonant in a rapidly changing, globalized world?

 

How do traditional South Asian performing arts evolve and remain resonant in a rapidly changing, globalized world?

The Program’s Aim

This inquiry is grounded in the belief that South Asian performing arts are living, evolving traditions that thrive through dialogue across disciplines, generations, stakeholders, and geographies. The Mittal Institute’s aim is to uncover how these forms adapt and flourish in different contexts, through offering experiential residencies, opportunities for public engagement, and supporting academic reflection on this topic.

Recent Engagement with Performing Arts

In 2024, the Mittal Institute hosted Ustad Bahauddin Dagar, a renowned rudra veena player, as a Distinguished Artist in Residence. During his residency, Dagar performed as part of university-wide arts initiatives, addressed ethnomusicology students, and interacted more closely with a broader community through a workshop. 

This residency reflected the program’s mission to explore how traditional South Asian art forms engage diverse audiences today—through performance, scholarship, and community interaction, each probing questions of access, relevance, and continuity. 

Flagship Initiative in Progress: The Creative Accelerator

The Creative Accelerator is a program currently in development at the Mittal Institute and is a pioneering residency for high-potential performing artists working within traditional South Asian art forms. Rooted in the principles of artistic inquiry and entrepreneurship, the Accelerator offers artists an additional lens through which to develop work, one that allows them to honor the frameworks of their genre while considering their audience in the creative process. 

Created in collaboration with leading arts administrators and cultural innovators, the Creative Accelerator uses Harvard’s ecosystem as a platform to examine broader questions about visibility, sustainability, and innovation in traditional arts practice.

Building a Foundation for Exploration

The performing arts program at the Mittal Institute continues to expand in scope and form. From Distinguished Artists in Residence to intimate salons, critical conversations to community-focused events, the Institute is building a dynamic platform for reflection and experimentation—one that supports scholarship, elevates artistic voices, and cultivates new modes of understanding South Asia’s performing traditions.

This work is deeply connected to the Mittal Institute’s broader mission: to advance interdisciplinary research, teaching, and dialogue that deepen global understanding of South Asia’s rich cultural, historical, and social landscapes.

Distinguished Indian classical musician Bahauddin Dagar on campus in Fall 2024, accompanied by tanpura player Shraddha Aggarwal and percussionist Tejas Tope.

Indian Classical Dance performance in New Delhi in March 2025.

​Learn more

For more information about Performing Arts at the Mittal Institute, contact Vani Krishnamurthy.

Program for Conservation of Culture

The Program for Conservation of Culture (PCC) at the Mittal Institute addressed the lack of manpower and knowledge transfer in South Asia’s cultural conservation.

With the aim to promote a climate for cultural conservation in South Asia, the Program for Conservation of Culture advanced an awareness of cultural heritage among cultural professionals, organized resources related to conservation practices in South Asia by facilitating network-building with leading global and regional conservation experts, and advocated for the sharing of knowledge between the arts and sciences.

Program Coordinators:
Jinah Kim, George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art, Harvard University
Meena Hewett, Arts Program Advisor, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

The Program for Conservation of Culture addressed some of the issues that surround knowledge sharing, research, training, networking, and policy recommendations in the practice of arts and heritage conservation. With hands-on, awareness-building workshops in the region, we worked to impart robust conservation training and knowledge to South Asia’s conservators.

Jinah Kim

Faculty Director, Arts Program, The Mittal Institute

About the Program

The diversity of South Asia’s built, material, and intangible heritage is perhaps unparalleled throughout the world. Vestiges of the region’s heritage — monuments, artifacts, languages, and stories — are fast being depleted due to environmental and climatic conditions and a lack of care from institutions and individuals. Monuments are at risk with the growth of urban cities; old paintings, manuscripts, and artifacts face material disintegration; and orally passed knowledge and skills are experiencing a loss of patronage.

South Asia’s heritage is intimately linked to peoples’ identities and ways of life. Today’s youth is becoming increasingly sensitive to their history and heritage, making the present moment significant for fostering an understanding of South Asia’s diverse past and transforming attitudes toward culture and heritage among citizens of the future.

One crucial aspect of maintaining cultural heritage for future generations is material conservation of works of art. Caring for these objects, many of which were made using fragile materials, requires training according to the best practices devised by global experts, access to resources, and a keen familiarity with the historical and cultural context of these objects. The current state of research and practice of conservation in India is in an incipient stage and overwhelmed by the enormity of the task of heritage conservation at hand.

Another obstacle to the practice of conservation science in the region is that the current scientific equipment for analyzing works of art is expensive and limitedly available. Cultural conservation in South Asia is also unable to thrive in part due to the slow-moving and siloed nature of museums and cultural institutions in South Asia.

With the aim to promote a climate for cultural conservation in South Asia, the Program for Conservation of Culture (PCC) brought global values of conservation practices in conversation with local needs, existing know-how of materials, resources, climate, legal parameters, and history, and built a solid foundation for future safekeeping and conservation of South Asia’s heritage. One crucial outcome of this program was to train a cadre of scientifically minded experts with a passion for uncovering the stories that objects can tell us.

Conservation Science Training and Research Program (CoSTAR)

In an attempt to bridge the gap between Art History, Museology, Art Conservation, and Conservation Science, the CoSTAR program – in partnership with the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University; Harvard Global Research Support Centre, New Delhi; and the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard University; in association with Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS Museum), Mumbai – strengthened the practice of Conservation Science in India. CoSTAR built up a temper of scientific studies in the conservation of art objects in India in conjunction with art historical studies. Learn about its launch in 2020 here.

CoSTAR was envisioned as a series of theoretical and practical modules covering a wide variety of topics in conservation science. Learn more about the modules below:

CoSTAR I, which launched in 2021, comprised nine-week online lectures and created a Knowledge Commons, a virtual platform to bring together museums and cultural and academic institutions to collaborate and share best practices that constitute a viable ecosystem for museums and the scientific study of cultural heritage in India.

Learn more about module 1

CoSTAR II was a series of theory and practical sessions, comprising 40 online and practical sessions over 7 months. It focused on building knowledge in technical studies of painted surfaces that can be applied on a day-to-day basis. Areas of focus included learning how to establish a workspace for analysis of painted surfaces of art objects, including miniatures, sculptures, textiles, oil paintings, and more; how to conduct technical studies to identify pigments; and also how to interpret these results to add value to curatorial, museology, art history, and art conservation expertise.

Learn more about module 2
Photo Credit: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) Museum

Workshops and Seminars

The Program for Conservation of Culture regularly holds workshops to break down the barriers to effective cultural conservation practices in South Asia.

Learn about art conservation events