Highlights from the 2011 art-scape

A comprehensive report from the news agency, PTI, aptly sums up how it was a mixed year for Indian art, especially since it lost a few giants. Here are the highlights from 2011:

• The year began with the 3rd India Art Summit, a three-day event that saw drama when M F Husain's works were installed then brought down and subsequently remounted with security. A bigger edition with new partners is scheduled in 2012.
  
  
• Chennai hosted its first international art fair in the month of March. 'Art Chennai' featured over 2000 works by contemporary artists spread over 18 sites in the city. The India Art Collective, an online art fair, was launched in November.
  
  
• Leading names from the art world paid a visit to India; Swiss curator Hans Obrist interviewed 25 intellectuals back-to-back in an eight-hour marathon organized by Khoj.
  
  
• British-Indian artist Anish Kapoor's first retrospective in India at National Gallery of Modern Art's new wing here and Mehboob studio in Mumbai showcased three decades of his work.
  
  
• One of the largest museums in America, The Art Institute of Chicago, is developing a major exhibition on royal arts of Jaipur, sourcing centuries-old royal art work from collections at Delhi's National Museum, London's Victoria Albert Museum and the Palace Museum and Albert Museums of Jaipur. "We are beginning a monumental exhibition on the royal art from Jaipur in Chicago in the year 2013," President and Director, ARTIC, James Cuno was quoted as saying during his visit here.
  
  
• Meanwhile China is finalizing plans to build a museum at Rabindranath Tagore's family residence in Kolkata to introduce the bard's writings, paintings and other work done during his visits to the neighboring country. At a book launch function in Delhi Chinese ambassador to India Zhang Yan said he had visited Tagore's home in Jorasanko in Kolkata to finalise the location of setting up of the "small museum that will introduce Tagore's works in China."