GRINNELL, Iowa – On Friday, Nov. 11 at 4 pm, the Grinnell College Museum of Art (GCMoA) will host a public conversation with art collectors Umesh and Sunanda Gaur. The Gaurs were originally scheduled to speak at the opening of the exhibition Paper Trails: Modern Indian Works on Paper from the Gaur Collection. However, the talk was rescheduled due to illness.
The Gaurs will speak about building their collection of Indian art. Dr. Sunanda Gaur, a pediatrician who specializes in infectious diseases, and her husband Umesh, who is president of a financial company, own one of the largest collections of contemporary Indian art in the U.S.
Formed over the last twenty-five years, the modern and contemporary Indian art collection of Umesh and Sunanda Gaur comprises about four hundred works. It includes paintings, works on paper, photography, sculpture, and tribal and folk art. The collection has been exhibited at several museums and published in exhibition catalogs, books, and journal articles. The Gaur collection was included in Art and Antiques magazine’s list of “Top 100 Collectors in America” in 2004 and 2007.
According to the Gaurs, “Our motivation to collect modern and contemporary Indian art is the pure joy of collecting…We do not feel that a collector is the owner of a work. Instead, we feel that we are privileged to be custodians of these works in our lifetime, preserving them for the next generation because these works will outlive us and last forever.”
Paper Trails: Modern Indian Works on Paper from the Gaur Collection, featuring 90 works from the collection of Umesh and Sunanda Gaur, will continue at the Grinnell College Museum of Art through December 10.
Information for visitors
Grinnell College Museum of Art, Bucksbaum Center for the Arts, 1108 Park St., Grinnell. Information about the exhibition and programming available at: grinnell.edu/museum or call 641-269-4660.
The museum is open to the public and always free. Visitors may use the west (Park Street facing) or north (campus facing) doors to the Bucksbaum Center for the Arts. At this time masks are optional. Minors under age 18 need to be accompanied by an adult.
Grinnell College welcomes the participation of people with disabilities. Information about parking and accessibility is available on the college’s website: grinnell.edu. Accommodation requests may be made to Conference Operations at 641-269-3235 or calendar@grinnell.edu.
