Umesh and Sunanda Gaur view collecting as a commitment to preserving art, supporting scholarship, and sharing works with wider audiences. Their gifts place significant groups of Indian art in public collections, where they can be studied, exhibited, and enjoyed by future generations. Each gift is shaped by the receiving museum’s collections, expertise, and educational mission.
A major gift of contemporary Indian photography in 2019 brought together 63 photographs by 16 artists, encompassing individual works and multipart series. Subsequent gifts of prints by Krishna Reddy and Jyoti Bhatt further enrich the museum’s holdings of modern Indian art.
Gifts include works from India’s Gond, Warli, and Mithila traditions; paintings by Bal Chhabda; an extensive collection of Krishna Reddy’s viscosity intaglio prints; and photographs by Jyoti Bhatt. Together, these works highlight the range of India’s indigenous and modern artistic practices.
Through these gifts, the Gaurs support a broader understanding of India’s diverse artistic traditions and their place in global art history.