About
To cultivate an environment for the preservation and development of the artistic and cultural expressions of India and the world, and to revitalise artistic and aesthetic sensibilities through living engagement with material culture, residency, training, and exhibition.
Sanskriti Foundation (formally Sanskriti Pratishthan) is a registered public charitable trust founded in 1979 and headquartered at Sanskriti Kendra, a seven-acre campus at Anandagram, on the Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road, approximately 10 km south of New Delhi. The Foundation was established by O. P. Jain, with L. M. Singhvi, A. M. Singhvi and Sudarshan Agarwal among its founding trustees. Its core activities include the Sanskriti Museums (three museums: the Museum of Everyday Art, the Museum of Indian Terracotta, and a Textile Museum), an International Residency Programme for Artists and Scholars, and training workshops in ceramics, enamelling, and block-printing. The campus also contains artists' residences, studios, and a library. The Foundation perceives its role as a catalyst for revitalising artistic and aesthetic sensibilities among Indian and international audiences.
Sanskriti Foundation was conceived in 1979 at a moment when questions about what post-independence India's cultural identity would look like were still very much alive. O. P. Jain, its founding figure, was a collector and cultural entrepreneur who believed that the surviving objects of everyday life, particularly the quotidian terracotta, textiles, and craft objects that were fast disappearing from daily use, deserved the same institutional care as high-art works. The word sanskriti, meaning the process of cultivating, was a deliberate philosophical choice: the Foundation was not simply a preservation body but a living institution committed to creating an environment in which artistic and cultural resources could continue to develop.
The Sanskriti Kendra campus at Anandagram on the Aravali foothills was the physical realisation of this idea. On seven acres of land, the Foundation constructed studios, residencies, and eventually three distinct museums. The Museum of Everyday Art gathers objects from the daily material culture of India. The Museum of Indian Terracotta, established in 1993, holds one of the most significant collections of Indian terracotta in the country. The Textile Museum completes the trio with a focus on India's rich weaving and textile heritage.
The International Residency Programme for Artists and Scholars, a central pillar of the Foundation's work, has brought artists, craftspeople, and researchers from across the world to Anandagram. This residency model is among the oldest of its kind in India and has produced sustained cross-cultural exchange at a campus that provides both the physical infrastructure and the intellectual community for serious creative work.
The Foundation has evolved over four decades to embrace a wider range of activities than its original focus on traditional arts. It now spans ceramics training, block-printing, enamelling, and a range of exhibition and educational programmes. Its early funding from government agencies including ICCR and private donors has diversified over the years, maintaining its status as a non-commercial institution focused on access and education.
Visit & Access
The campus is approximately 10 km south of central New Delhi, near Aya Nagar on the Mehrauli-Gurgaon Road. Nearest Delhi Metro station: Arjan Garh (Yellow Line). Open for visits; call or email ahead for museum timings.
Founding & Leadership
O. P. Jain is a collector, cultural entrepreneur, and the founding figure of Sanskriti Foundation. A specialist in traditional Indian material culture, he established the Foundation with a particular interest in preserving the quotidian art and terracotta traditions that formal museum systems consistently overlooked. His curatorial vision shaped the three Sanskriti museums and the philosophy of the campus.
Leadership & Trustees
Initiatives & Portfolio
A museum dedicated to the quotidian art objects of Indian daily life.
One of India's most significant collections of Indian terracotta, covering tribal and folk traditions.
Collection focused on India's weaving and textile heritage.
One of India's oldest international artist residency programmes, hosted at Anandagram campus.
Hands-on training workshops in traditional craft disciplines.
Sanskriti Foundation is significant in the Delhi cultural ecosystem for two distinct reasons. First, its museums, particularly the Museum of Indian Terracotta and the Museum of Everyday Art, preserve and display categories of material culture that most major institutions neglect: the functional, vernacular, and quotidian objects of Indian life rather than royal commissions or temple art. Second, its international artist residency, one of the longest-running in India, has established Anandagram as a site for productive cross-cultural creative work at a remove from the city's commercial and institutional pressures. The campus itself, with its studios, museums, and natural setting on the Aravali foothills, represents a particular vision of what a cultural institution could be: embedded in the landscape, accessible but not commercialised, and committed to making and thinking rather than only collecting.
Sanskriti Foundation operates largely outside the mainstream visibility of Delhi's cultural circuit, which is in some ways its distinctive strength: Anandagram is a working campus rather than a public gallery, and its real value is in the depth of engagement it enables over time. Its terracotta museum and everyday art collection are genuinely unusual cultural resources, not replicated elsewhere in the city. For serious researchers, conservators, or artists seeking residency in India, Sanskriti remains one of the most serious private cultural institutions in the country. Its low public profile is not a sign of reduced relevance but of a deliberate institutional character.