The Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation (SSAF) and Asia Art Archive (AAA) in India have come together to strengthen research and documentation in the field of art, culture, and ideas. SSAF is committed to supporting interdisciplinary practices that connect art with broader cultural and social contexts, while AAA is dedicated to building resources for the study of modern and contemporary art in Asia. Together, they emphasize the importance of preserving fragile archives and making them accessible for public knowledge. Their work prioritizes materials and voices often left out of mainstream collections, including regional language sources and lesser-known cultural expressions. Through this collaboration, both organizations aim to create platforms where art history, visual culture, and social ideas can be critically studied, interpreted, and disseminated. The joint initiative promotes inclusivity, archival sensitivity, and innovation, ensuring that the narratives of art and culture remain dynamic and relevant for future generations. By encouraging scholars, artists, and researchers to engage deeply with underexplored materials, SSAF and AAA collectively foster a more diverse and equitable cultural archive that highlights overlooked contributions, broadens our understanding of history, and reshapes public engagement with art and its contexts

The SSAF–AAA Research Grant for Archiving Histories of Art, Ideas, and Visual Culture is designed to support projects that investigate and document lesser-known or inaccessible archives. The focus is on visual and cultural print materials, such as books, pamphlets, posters, journals, and ephemera, which are often excluded from public collections. By prioritizing sources in regional languages and overlooked archives, the grant encourages research that repositions these materials within cultural and historical discourse. Applicants are invited to explore how such resources shaped or reflected broader cultural, artistic, and political moments in history. The grant emphasizes originality, interdisciplinary methods, and innovative approaches that not only preserve but also reinterpret fragile materials. Successful proposals are expected to present ways of sharing research in the public domain through digital platforms, essays, exhibitions, or institutional collaborations. By making previously inaccessible content visible, the grant aims to contribute to new understandings of history and culture. Projects selected under this scheme will run from 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026, with grantees also encouraged to address content rights and deliver practical, sustainable outcomes that can feed into larger public archives curated by SSAF and AAA.