Center for Art & Archeology
The AIIS Center for Art and Archaeology (CA&A), established in 1965, is an international leader in the documentation of Indic art and architecture.
Mission Statement
The Center for Art & Archaeology (CA&A), a leading archive and library on visual arts & architecture of the Indian subcontinent, deploys its resources to facilitate scholarly research and to provide the broadest possible access to a diverse national and international audience. Central to this mission in the 21st century is advancing the impact of CA&A resources through the digital transformation of its archives and research publications and ensuring an expansion of its holdings to more fully reflect the subcontinent’s forms of visual expression, as well as creating a globally accessible digital resource.
Resources
The Center for Art & Archaeology maintains a photo archive of over 7,000 monuments, ancient buildings, and photographic surveys of 350 museum collections in India, primarily created by the CA&A professional staff. These photographs were documented for the Center’s research projects and commissions funded by both central and state governments. Leading research scholars, including Frederick and Catherine Asher, Carmel Berkson, Grace Morley, and Walter Spink, have contributed photographs and papers. High-resolution images from these collections are available upon request for scholarly publications.
CA&A houses more than 200,000 photographs, negatives, and slides of Indic art and architecture. Additionally, the architectural drawings archive includes about 10,000-floor plans, elevations, and 3D models of select heritage structures created by CA&A draftspersons. The digitization of the entire collection is ongoing, and large portions are currently available online on the following sites:
- Virtual Museum of Images and Sounds
- ArtStor on JStor
- Digital South Asia Library
- Modern Endangered Archives Program
- University of Pennsylvania
- Google Arts & Culture
CA&A maintains a major research library focusing on art, architecture and archaeology in the Indian subcontinent. This open-stack facility, located at AIIS’s Headquarters in Gurugram, houses 75,000 books, journals and maps. Select AIIS-CA&A publications, including the volumes of the Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture, have been made available online on VMIS.
Contact Information
The Center for Art & Archaeology
22, Sector-32
Institutional Area
Gurugram-122 001 Haryana
Tel: 91-124-238 1424, 91-124-238 1359
Email:
Open: Monday – Friday (please contact for further information)
Contact: Dr. Vandana Sinha, Director