Avid Learning’s Museum Lens: Curating Collaborations, Conversations, and Cultural Futures

Avid Learning’s Museum Lens: Curating Collaborations, Conversations, and Cultural Futures

Few institutions reflect the pulse of a nation’s cultural consciousness as powerfully as museums. Since its inception in 2009, Avid Learning has engaged with museums as vital spaces where knowledge, culture, and public life intersect. With a curatorial vision rooted in interdisciplinarity and access, we have championed museums as evolving arenas for engagement, critical inquiry, and creative exchange. Over the past 15+ years, Avid Learning has positioned museums at the heart of its cultural programming. Through strategic collaborations and wide-ranging partnerships, we have explored museums from multiple vantage points: curatorial innovation, institutional storytelling, digital transformation, education, and access. Avid Learning is at the forefront of museum discourse, not only spotlighting the possibilities of these spaces but also contributing to how they are understood, accessed, and imagined in a changing world.

Collaborations with Mumbai Museums
Avid Learning’s sustained engagement with Mumbai’s museum ecosystem reflects a broader commitment to reimagining cultural institutions as civic anchors and platforms for lifelong learning. Through long-standing partnerships with the city’s most iconic museums, we have created immersive, inclusive, and intergenerational programming that both responds to and shapes Mumbai’s cultural pulse.

Since its inception in 2009, Avid Learning has maintained a close association with Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), regularly presenting programs both at and in partnership with the museum.

In 2020, we launched the online ‘Sustainability Now’ series in collaboration with CSMVS, exploring intersections between environmental consciousness and cultural institutions. As part of the fourth edition, we presented ‘The Eco Museum’, a program dedicated to green museum practices and sustainable design thinking.

On the completion of the museum’s 100 years, Avid Learning presented a virtual session titled ‘The Centennial Unveiling’, which delved into the four-part restoration plan of CSMVS. It examined the challenges of repairing a heritage building in the midst of a pandemic, operating a green museum, and preserving layered architectural narratives.

The precinct-focused installment of one of our flagship series, ‘Uncovering Urban Legacies,’ was hosted at the historic Coomaraswamy Hall. This iteration marked a conceptual shift from diasporic histories to neighbourhood geographies, centering heritage precincts that contribute to Mumbai’s layered urban identity. The series spotlighted five locales: Shivaji Park, Gamdevi, Mazagon, Khotachiwadi, and Colaba. Each conversation surfaced the architectural character, socio-political legacy, and intangible spirit of these neighborhoods.

At the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai, Avid Learning programming has brought together the historical and the tech-forward. In 2017, we presented the second iteration of ‘Multipolis Mumbai’, a flagship series first launched in 2012, examining the city’s shifting identity through episodes that reflected Mumbai’s evolving social, cultural, and ecological rhythms.

To celebrate International Museum Day 2018, Avid Learning presented ‘Art & Technology in the City’, a discussion on how institutions are using technology to enhance access, production, preservation, and audience engagement in the arts.

For International Museum Day 2019, we presented ‘Museums and the City’, a conversation that examined unconventional cultural institutions and their evolving roles within Mumbai’s civic life.

Avid Learning is also invited to curate special programming during major NGMA exhibitions. During ‘Maharaja’s Treasure: Select Works of Art from the Famed Air India Collection’, we curated ‘Art Beyond the Canvas’ and ‘The Art of Collecting ’, exploring themes of artistic expression, cultural preservation, and the dynamics of collection-building.

In recent years, Avid Learning presented two cutting-edge programs that explored the intersection of artificial intelligence and the arts. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Tech-Art: What’s Next? investigated the implications of machine learning on creativity and visual expression, while Lights, Algorithms, Action – Reimagining Cinema with Artificial Intelligence examined how AI is transforming storytelling and cinematic language. Both sessions drew practitioners from across the fields of design, technology, and performance.

We are also presenting the ongoing installment of Uncovering Urban Legacies - ‘Icons of Bombay’ in collaboration with the NGMA, Mumbai. After exploring diasporic communities and historic precincts, we now turn our attention to urban icons. The first program in this series, Taxis, Public Clocks, and Statues, reframed familiar fixtures of the city as carriers of collective memory and markers of public imagination. The second episode will explore three more icons of the city - Wells, Single-Screen Theatres, and Dabbawalas.

In celebration of the International Museum Day 2025, Avid Learning presented What Makes a Museum? Reimagining Spaces, Redefining Collections, bringing together a dynamic cross-section of founders, designers, architects, and curators who explored how new museums are moving beyond object-based curation to embrace storytelling, interactivity, and community engagement.

At Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, we co-presented Evolving Clay Practices - A Prelude to ‘Common Ground’, the curtain-raiser to the second edition of the Indian Ceramics Triennale 2024. held later in New Delhi. Co-curators Anjani Khanna and Sharbani Das Gupta offered a preview of the triennale’s curatorial themes, while a short film profiled participating artists. The program also included a panel discussion with UK-based ceramic artists.

Expanding the Frame: Festival Dialogues and Thematic Explorations
At the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival 2024, under the aegis of the Government of Maharashtra’s ‘Mumbai Festival’, Avid Learning curated ‘The Making of a Museum’. Moderated by Asad, the panel unpacked the anatomy of museum design, from circulation to security, lighting to interpretation, reminding audiences that architecture is itself a curatorial act.

At BRIDGES 2024 by RARE India, Avid Learning presented ‘Museums as a Muse’, a conversation that bridged museums with the growing field of creative tourism.  Moderated by Asad, the session explored how museums can transcend passive observation and become immersive, participatory experiences for travelers and locals alike.

At the 2022 Amdavad Art-é Summit, Avid Learning convened ‘Museums of Tomorrow’, a forward-facing conversation on what the next generation of Indian museums might look like. The panel discussion emphasized equity, pluralism, and storytelling as central to the museum’s future.

Children’s Programming

Avid Learning’s work with the Children’s Museum at CSMVS has been equally vital. From unveiling ‘Coral Woman’, an illustrated book aimed at sensitizing children to marine conservation, to curating interactive programs like ‘Adventures of the South Pole’, which combined film screenings with creative workshops.

We also presented ‘Maharaja as a Muse: A Children’s Art Workshop’ at NGMA, Mumbai, which explored the cultural significance of Air India’s iconic mascot. The session, led by an art educator, introduced children to themes of heritage and creativity through drawing and expression.

At the Museum of Solutions (MuSo), Avid partnered with Mumbai’s premier children’s literature festival, ‘Peek A Book 2024’, to present a joyful, multi-sensory celebration of books and ideas. The event featured craft sessions, performances, writing workshops, and interactive cooking, reaffirming the museum as a space for exploration and play.

Collaborations with Bengaluru Museums

In collaboration with India’s first interactive music museum, the Indian Music Experience (IME) Museum, Bengaluru, we presented the ‘Across Cultures’ series, a set of six digital programs that explored how music travels, shaped by migration, memory, and identity. Through conversations and curated performances, the series looked at the cross-cultural exchange embedded in musical forms, traditions, and listening practices. It opened up new ways of thinking about music as a shared language that carries stories across geographies and generations.

We also partnered on a series of virtual programs inspired by IME’s acclaimed exhibition ‘Birdsong’, which explored the role of birds in music, culture, and environmental consciousness. The sessions brought together practitioners from the performing and visual arts to examine how birds have influenced artistic expression across disciplines. From ragas inspired by bird calls to avian symbolism in dance and visual art, the series highlighted the resonance of nature within our creative ecosystems.

The G20 Bengaluru Cultural Tracker, a symposium on leveraging digital technologies for the protection and promotion of culture, was held in the nation’s Silicon Valley and one of the world’s leading tech hubs, at the Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru.

Collaborations with the Ministry of Culture, Government of India
At the first-ever International Museum Expo 2023, held in New Delhi under the banner of Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, Avid Learning curated and presented the widely attended session ‘Transcending Boundaries’, which examined the rise of unconventional and community-rooted museums. Asad Lalljee, CEO of Avid Learning and Curator of the Royal Opera House Mumbai, moderated the discussion. The panel offered a comprehensive look at how museums are now as likely to emerge from lived experience and collective memory as from state collections or royal endowments. Asad Lalljee also shared his thoughts on the panel ‘Keeping Afloat: Financial Sustainability of Museums and Cultural Spaces’ as a speaker, using the Royal Opera House as a case study.He also introduced three keynote speakers on stage at the expo, including Dr. Sachchidanand Joshi, Manuel Rabaté, and Rajeev Sethi. Together, these speakers offered enriching insights and illustrated case studies on curating and museology.

Avid Learning was also the knowledge partner for the inaugural India Art, Architecture and Design Biennale (IAADB’23) held at the Red Fort, New Delhi. Asad Lalljee anchored the logo launch and curtain raiser of the Biennale on 7th October at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.

Building on this foundation, Avid returned to the Ministry’s flagship event at the International Museum Expo 2024 with the panel ‘Novel Museums and New Media’. This session turned its gaze to the digital frontier, investigating how augmented reality, virtual collections, and interactive archives are reframing museological experiences. 

Museums and Creative Economy: Cultural Policy Conferences
During India’s G20 presidency in 2023, Avid Learning co-presented the Mumbai Cultural Tracker - ‘Cultural Confluences: Empowering Creative Industries of the Future’ and Bengaluru Cultural Tracker - ‘Intersections: Arts, Culture & Technology.’ Building on their success and to widen the policy conversations, we co-convened three city-wide Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) symposiums in Kochi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru in 2024, ending with the third annual national conference, Virasat, in New Delhi. These day-long conferences brought together industry experts, policymakers, and cultural practitioners to advance the dialogue on the Promotion of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI) and Creative Economy. These symposiums were curated in alignment with the Ministry of Culture, Government of India's targeted sectors to foster meaningful discussions, document insights, share best practices, and guide policy-making for India's diverse cultural and creative sectors, the growth and development of museums and cultural institutions being one of them. The outcomes were compiled into a white paper, launched in the presence of Ms. Lily Pandeya, Joint Secretary,  Ministry of Culture, Government of India.

The Way Forward

As institutions evolve and expectations shift, rearranged by new questions, new audiences, and new urgencies, Avid Learning has kept pace by working closely with museums as collaborators. Through programs, partnerships, and policy work, Avid Learning will continue to explore what museums can be and the many ways they can speak to the present.