History shines in the halls here, transporting visitors into the 1900s with its art collection bought from the Tagore family, which influenced modern art in India. Built in the early 1900s, the Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum in the ancestral home of the Lalbhai family in Ahmedabad’s Shahibaug. It is now a historic house museum dedicated to industrialist and philanthropist Kasturbhai Lalbhai (December 19, 1894 to January 20, 1980), who co-founded Arvind Mills.
The museum is headed by Jayshree Lalbhai, wife of the late Kasturbhai’s grandson Sanjay Lalbhai. “When we decided to restore our ancestral mansion into a historic house museum dedicated to Kasturbhai Lalbhai who lived here for much of his life, we decided to exhibit his heirlooms, including his library, furniture and the art collection sold to him by the Tagore family of West Bengal,” says Jayshree, who wanted to retain the look of the historic house while displaying the art pieces and archiving and cataloguing the collection. After three years of work, the museum opened to the public this year.
The living room is decorated with sculptures such as Chola bronzes, Pala stone statues and a Gandharva bust. Shiva and Parvati sculptures are housed in a carved wooden shrine. A pichvai (religious Vaishnava painting) hangs on a wall. In the room dedicated to Mughal, Rajasthani and Pahari miniature paintings, the centrepiece is a repurposed table that encases in glass the Khamsa of Nizami with outstanding Persian calligraphy and miniatures. A side table has a tablet that enables visitors to access the digital form of the manuscript. A tabletop with a devi painting is redesigned in tiers, recreating temple steps. A dressing table with bidriware pieces and a display of Rasamanjari paintings by artists from the Punjab hills shows how furniture can become part of the museum’s exhibition design. Next to the grand stairway is a display of Tibetan Buddhist art.
Upstairs is a collection of works of Bengal artists, representing Bengal Revivalism. Works by Mukul Chandra Dey, a student of Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan and a pioneer of drypoint-etching in India, include portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. Ramayana paintings by Nandlal Bose are displayed under a glass on a table top. Gaganendranath Tagore’s cubist art is represented by maze-like paintings in black and white.
Works by Hemendranath Mazumdar show his popular theme—Bengali women draped in saris. A cabinet houses handpainted and handwritten postcards from students of the Tagores to their gurus, some of the most moving exhibits of the museum. The annexe, designed in the 1930s by Claude Batley, exhibits contemporary art, including work by Anjolie Ela Menon, Atul Dodiya, Bharti Kher, Bhupen Khakkar, M F Husain, Francis Newton Souza and other Indian artists.