Defence Colony in Delhi has become first to house an art bookstore. The store is sponsored by the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art. Popularly called the Vadehra Gallery, the store has a large reading room. There is huge collection of art material with more than 20,000 titles. These are accessible online and offline to people without any charge.

 

The bookstore organized a seminar on the issue of 'Archiving Contemporary Art,' and many well-known personalities from art and aesthetics world came to attend it. Famous archivist Claire Hsu from the Hong Kong-based Asia Art Archive, and Austria-based scholar and archaeologist Eric Neumayer were the leading participants and speakers in the seminar.

 

Claire Hsu delivering his lecture said that the large body of contemporary art in Asia, mostly from China, India, South Korea and the Philippines is important and should be preserved carefully. He concluded that his Asia Art Archive was trying to do its best as a collectors’ endeavour to spread awareness, preserve and catalogue contemporary art.