This book is an intensive reconsideration of the very first site-specific installation staged in India. Vivan Sundaram, one of India's most innovative artists, located his History Project, marking fifty years of Indian independence, in a hugely visited and popular public institution, the Victoria Memorial and Museum in Kolkata. The artist's choice of setting was by way of a challenge: to 'occupy' an imperial edifice and change its orientation; to reflect India's struggle for independence and the emerging nation's stake in modernity through an anachronistic mirror; and to engage with postcolonial contradictions through recursive narration. It needed an artwork scaled to the proportion of these issues and the book examines how Sundaram met this challenge. His ideology and aesthetic, his formal choices and method, are critically investigated in a series of essays contributed by distinguished authors: cultural theorists, art and architectural historians. The book carries abundant, well-annotated illustrations of the complex installation.

The mapping of the history and trajectory of Indian modern art is a project begun only in recent years and included in it is the recovery of lesser known names and moments from under the shadow of a few dominant ones. Within it, its conscience keeper-art criticism-has borne greater neglect and obscurity. One such voice, heard with considerable attention in its time, was that of the Delhi-based art critic K. B. Goel (1930-2018). Active from the late 1950s to the '90s, his career broadly coincided with the modernist period. Active mainly as a reviewer, Goel also wrote lengthy reflective assessments, and his art writings stand out for an interpretative and often theory-based approach that is quite unique to Indian art criticism. Writing on some of the most definitive artists, movements, and styles of twentieth-century Indian art, he bears the distinction of successfully transitioning from his modernist training to theorize on the earliest postmodern developments in Indian art, such as installation art. This annotated volume seeks to bring together Goel's major writings, accompanied by a critical introduction that draws attention to his frameworks, concerns, and methodologies. It has a foreword by the eminent art critic Geeta Kapur.

The Swami Vivekananda's speech to the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 is the centerpiece of Indian artist Jitish Kallat's new work, Public Notice 3. The installation went on view at the Art Institute of Chicago on September 11, 2010, exactly 108 years after Vivekananda delivered his groundbreaking address calling for an end to "bigotry and fanaticism." The text of the speech appears on the risers of the Art Institute of Chicago's Grand Staircase where it is illuminated in the five colors-red, orange, yellow, blue, and green-designated by the United States Homeland Security Advisory System to signify threat levels. This companion book, which documents the installation, is the first full-scale exploration of Kallat's work published by a North American institution. Along with an interview with the artist, essays contextualize Public Notice 3 within the space of the installation and evaluate Kallat's oeuvre within an international context. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: The Art Institute of Chicago (09/11/10-09/11/11)