Making history meaningful
Use Archives to Make Meaning of Art and History
Conducted by Malvika Bhatia, Archive Director of the Citizens’ Archive of India.
In conjunction with the exhibition:
Family Resemblances: Sir J.J School and the Search for a Modern Indian Idiom
🗓️ Saturday, 17th October 2026 | ⏱️ 11 AM – 1:30 PM
👪 18 and above |📍Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum
About the Workshop
What happens when archival material is taken out of the archive and put into conversation with artworks, places, people and public memory?
Piece by Piece is a group investigation led by seasoned archivists that explores how historical material can be used beyond the archive itself. Inspired by the current ongoing exhibition – ‘Family Resemblances: Sir J.J School and the Search for a Modern Indian Idiom,’ the workshop will be led by Malvika Bhatia, Archive Director at The Citizens’ Archive of India (CAI).
Using selected works from the exhibition as starting points, the workshop draws on CAI’s approach to reading oral histories, photographs, documents, material memory and historical moments; giving participants a practical understanding of how archives can be read, questioned, interpreted, and used.
🎟️ Charges: ₹200
🎫 Museum entry ticket applicable
About the exhibition
Presented by the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in collaboration with Chatterjee and Lal, Family Resemblances: Sir J.J. School and the Search for a Modern Indian Idiom is curated by Mortimer Chatterjee and Tasneem Zakaria Mehta. Through the lives and work of three members of one family – Rustom Siodia, his daughter Cumi Dallas, and her husband Homi Dallas – the exhibition examines three distinct formulations of a modern Indian idiom in art and architecture. Each was connected to the Sir J.J. institutions, and each responded differently to the idea of the modern during a period shaped by the last decades of colonial rule and its aftermath.
About Citizens’ Archive of India
The Citizens’ Archive of India is a digital archive that preserves the personal narratives and material memories of people who have witnessed India’s evolution, building a publicly accessible archive of lived experiences for future generations.
About Malvika Bhatia
Malvika Bhatia is a museum and heritage professional and an oral historian.
She spent the initial part of her career working in museum education and has been running The Citizens’ Archive of India since 2017.
