Asutosh Museum of Indian Art

The Asutosh Museum of Indian Art belongs to the University of Calcutta and is named after Sir Asutosh Mookerjee, the educationist who promoted the study of Indian art and archaeology there. Its focus is collecting, showing and studying the art and antiquities of eastern India. It began with just five objects and, under its first curator D.P. Ghosh and many donors, grew to about 25,000 items.

The collection first sat at the back of the old Senate Hall. In 1942, during the Second World War, it was moved to the Imambara at Murshidabad, with the heavy stone pieces kept below ground for safety. It came back five years later, moved again in 1960, and finally settled in the university's new Centenary Building.

The ground floor holds stone sculpture from Bengal, Odisha and Bihar, led by a black basalt Vasudeva from Jessore, along with terracotta, coins, seals and Gupta-style Buddhist pieces from Sarnath. Upstairs are mural copies from India and Sri Lanka, Tibetan and Nepali banners, Mughal, Rajasthani and Pahari paintings, scroll pats, kantha embroidery, dolls and scenes from the lives of Krishna, Rama and Chaitanya.