Cultural Capitals Future Legacies of India’s Cities – Patna

Moumita Ghosh is the Curator the Bihar Museum, under the Department of Art, Culture and Youth, Government of Bihar. She has over a decade of experience in Collection Management, Curation andother museum related works. Before joining Bihar Museum she worked in Indian Museum, Allahabad Museum in different curatorial capacity. She worked with Lord Cultural Resources as Researcher for the collection analysis for the Bihar Museum. She has been awarded Small Study and Research Grant (India) 2013 for ‘Ivory Carving Tradition from Murshidabad’ from Nehru Trust for the Indian Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Moumita Ghosh has a M. A. in Museology and B. A (Hons.) in History from University of Calcutta.

Naresh Kumar (Born-1988, Patna), founder - Studio Naresh Kumar - lives and works between Patna Bombay and paris. Studio explore and engage in contemporary art practices; currently working in the art gallery, museum, public space, online, and multiple other contexts of art making and exhibition. His practice addresses the social, economic, and migration conditions of our time through deeply personal and performative gestures. Inspired by the process of migration and the shifting identities and hopes it often accompanies. His work draws upon his own experience as a migrant first from rural Bihar to Delhi, and later to Paris and Mumbai. Naresh works with highly symbolic materials and objects, large sculpture, installation and painting, His performative and transformative manipulation of the mundane are at the same time reflections and enquiries into the role of ritual and philosophy in a world of information and technology. BFA Patna & MFA Agra 2010, École des Beaux-Arts in 2014-15. His works have been exhibited and collected by some of the major galleries and museums in the world including Dakar Biennial, Senegal, Africa | Irish Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Dublin, Ireland, | ACCA, Gwangju, | Baijia Lake Museum, Nanjing, China, | Darat Al-Funun, Museum, Amman, |BDL Museum, Bombay, | Gandhi museum Patna, | saloon. London, | kadist art foundation, Paris, |Para Site, Hong Kong, | PAWA at Wellington, New Zealand, | Foundation Salomon, France, Schmall Gallery, Amsterdam, | Galerie Frachon Felix in Brussels, | Chemould Prescott Road, Bombay, New gallery, Paris, | Clark House Initiative, Bombay |

Puja Sahu, owner of the famed The Potbelly Bihari Kitchen had been a designer for over 12 years. At some point in her design career, she decided to use her potential to the fullest and started thinking about opening a cafe. Potbelly serves her mother’s traditional Bihari recipes. The Potbelly is currently present in 3 locations in India- Gurugram, Bihar and two restaurants in New Delhi.

Vinayak Yashraj is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fashion & Lifestyle Accessories at the NIFT Patna and teaches Fashion Society & Culture, Fashion & Film image, History & Philosophy of Design & Fashion, etc. Post his graduation from NIFT Delhi, he has contributed in the fashion industry in key profiles like visual merchandising and merchandising in prestigious luxury and fashion retail organizations in India. Following his Masters in Fashion Marketing from Istituto Europeo Di Design in Milan, he worked on projects with Luxury Fashion and Textile companies. His PhD includes the Ethnographic Study of Film Costumes, Fashion, and Feminism, which he is pursuing from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Patna. He has published with Media Watch, Contemporary Literature Review India and the American Journal of Arts and Design. Currently as a Campus Coordinator he is part of the Trend Research and Fashion Forecasting project sponsored by Govt. of India, coordinated by NIFT, with special reference and focus to Patna.

Aparna Andhare is the Deputy Editor, Live History India, looking after programming for LHI Circle. She was, until recently, a curator at the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, the City Palace, Jaipur. Joining the Museum in 2017, she worked on developing a new gallery on transport, contributed to publications, had collection responsibilities, and handled outreach activities including social media. Specialising in art and architecture of early modern India, she has two master's degrees: Art in the Global Middle Ages (University of Edinburgh, 2017), and Arts and Aesthetics (Master's, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2012). In Bombay, she has worked on independent archiving projects, and taught and co-ordinated the Art Design History and Theory programme for the undergraduates at ISDI-Parson's Mumbai (2013-16). Aparna contributes to various publications on art and culture.