The City Palace is a sprawling complex of grand courtyards, domed pavilions, and intricately designed facades crafted from pink sandstone and marble. Built in 1727, when Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II created Jaipur as the capital of his kingdom, it has of late been shedding its image as a tourist attraction and reclaiming its practice of patronage.

Much of it is thanks to Sawai Padmanabh Singh, 26, the titular maharaja of Jaipur, who has been on a mission to revitalise its spirit. The latest addition is the Jaipur Centre for Art (JCA), a 2,600 sq. ft. contemporary art institution, co-founded with friend and curator Noelle Kadar, which opened last month in the palace.

Noelle Kadar and Sawai Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur | Photo Credit: Gourab Ganguly

It aims to add another facet to the city’s historic core and cultural legacy, which already boasts the successful Jaipur Literature Festival, and the Jaipur Art Week started by art entrepreneur and executive director of Prestige Group, Sana Rezwan’s, Public Arts Trust of India. The black-tie launch was a veritable who’s who of the art and culture world, with names such as author William Dalrymple, artists Shilo Shiv Sulemaan and Subodh Gupta, and designer Thierry Journo.

Author William Dalrymple and his wife, artist Olivia Fraser on the opening night

(L-R) Artist Shilo Shiv Suleman, designer Neha Luthra, jeweller Siddharth Kasliwal, and designer Helena Bajaj Larsen

“Jaipur has always led in image-making, not just for itself but for the subcontinent. It was once a melting pot of ideas, trade, shaping global conversations on art, craft, and leadership. In recent decades, while cities like Paris, New York, and London set the tone for contemporary thought, we have been slow to participate,” says Singh. “It took time and education [in heritage conservation and preservation from Italy] for me to truly understand the richness of this land. Our goal at JCA is to reconnect Jaipur with the global contemporary, creating a space where local and international voices can come together meaningfully.”

Matter of perspective

To be contemporary is to tap into the present’s pulse, feel its immediacy, while fully aware of its inevitable flux. It is this fluidity that JCA embraces with its inaugural exhibition, A New Way of Seeing, curated by Peter Nagy of Nature Morte, and Kadar. The show delivers on its title — provoking and promising a fresh perspective. First, by positioning works by artists such as Anish Kapoor and Dayanita Singh, whose works are in stark contrast to each other in terms of their mediums, styles, and ethos, in the same room; it compels us to inhabit their works in a radically different manner. And second, by replacing the white cube with a space that incorporates the palace’s mood, with delicate arches and columns, and panel moulding — creating its own drama.

Manjunath Kamath’s White Whispers Over Shy Red

The exhibition showcases an eclectic mix of paintings, sculptures, and photographs, each probing manners of perception. As Peter Nagy explains, “[The artists] think about the way their worlds will be viewed by an audience, how they can manipulate or subvert what the viewer will encounter… through abstraction, multiplication, reflection, and deception.”

This exploration is brought vividly to life in Hiroshi Sugimoto’s ongoing series, Theatres and Seascapes, which the Japanese photographer began in 1978. Each black-and-white photograph captures the “same” image — a horizon line splitting the frame or a theatre’s vanishing point — yet the illusion of sameness belies the impossibility of repeating time or space. Similarly, Dayanita Singh’s stunning Time Measures (from 2016) uses 34 colour prints of red muslin bundles, their fading patterns shaped by sunlight, to evoke the distinctiveness of age and memory.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Everett Square Theatre, Boston, 2013 | Photo Credit: Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Dayanita Singh’s Time Measures

Among the large-scale works, Tanya Goel’s abstractions stand out for their process-oriented approach — crafted from pigments she makes herself. The Botanicals series revisits colonial herbarium illustrations, underscoring how art can reinterpret historical narratives. Anish Kapoor’s striking discs, Oriental Blue to Clear (2023) and Magenta to Clear (2024), reflect and dissolve everything that confronts them.

Tanya Goal’s Mechanism 21 | Photo Credit: Courtesy Nature Morte

Anish Kapoor’s Magenta to Clear | Photo Credit: Courtesy Lisson Gallery

Spirit of collaboration

Kadar describes her approach as inherently collaborative. “Here, we have placed artists from around the world next to each other in a setting that is deeply historical. It made me think of them very differently even though I was familiar with their work. For instance, you see Sugitomo’s Seascapes here in the middle of a desert, but it will make complete sense — the endlessness of the horizon and its indifference to time and space drawing you in.”

A spirit of collaboration also runs through how JCA came about, after years of talking about art with Singh — a project that bridges Singh’s more traditional arts background and her own contemporary one.

Why was Jaipur, a city of craft, chosen? “So many people come to the city to take things back — rugs, jewellery, textiles, craft. There are also museums that display beautiful objects and their legacies of creation and possession,” Kadar muses. “HH [one of Singh’s nicknames and short for His Highness] and I thought about why we are doing this. Why something so experimental should make sense in Jaipur. Beyond the physical location, we hope that our exhibitions relate to the land, the city and the history of Jaipur. A New Way of Seeing is based on materiality, of the space as well as the streets of Jaipur in all their contradictions and synchronies. [So] in some cases, this will be more obvious, but we will make sure that thread runs through.”

Artwork by Ayesha Singh at the City Palace

Alongside exhibitions, JCA will also launch an artist residency programme. Artists will live in the palace complex, have access to the palace archives and the Pothi Khana, the museum’s archives and library, and foster connections through their work with Jaipur’s vibrant heritage, materials, and local artisans.

JCA, as Singh and Kadar put it, aspires to be more than a gallery. “It will collaborate and engage with similar institutes across the country and the world to reinvigorate and redefine contemporary art and culture.” And, hark back to its origin days while rooting itself in the global contemporary.

A New Way of Seeing is on till March 16, 2025.

The essayist and designer writes on design and culture.