“India: Contemporary Art from Northeastern Private Collections” was co-organized by Umesh Gaur and Zimmerli’s Senior Curator Jeffrey Wechsler.  100 works of art on loan from collectors based in the Northeastern United States were exhibited. The exhibition emphasized the production of the post-independence era – that is, 1947 to the present.  A broad range of Indian artists of this era were displayed -- from the members of the groundbreaking Progressive Artists Group (Souza, Husain, Ara, and Raza), to other first and second-generation Indian modernists (Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta, Ganesh Pyne, Natvar Bhavsar, et al), to artists who had emerged in recent years (Atul Dodiya, et al).  

The exhibition was the first comprehensive survey of post-independence contemporary Indian art, illustrating the breadth and excellent quality of works being collected in this country.  Compared to earlier exhibitions on this subject, the Zimmerli show was the largest presentation of modern and contemporary Indian art at a Western Museum thus far at that time.  

A fully-illustrated catalogue edited by Umesh Gaur and Curator Jeffrey Wechsler accompanied the exhibition, documenting its contents and included several essays offering views of Indian contemporary art and collecting. Yashodhara Dalmia, an art historian based in Delhi, India wrote the main essay for the catalogue.  Each illustration in the catalog was accompanied by a brief descriptive/interpretive entry authored by contemporary Indian art scholars in India and the US. Vidya Dehejia, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution at that time served as a consultant.  

Jitish Kallat, a Mumbai based artist, created a large mixed media painting especially for this exhibition.  The artist generously offered this work to be auctioned at the museum to support the exhibition. 

The exhibition received an excellent review by Holland Cotter, iconic art critic of the NY Times
 https://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/26/arts/art-review-in-new-jersey-art-from-asia-on-a-comfortably-human-scale.html