Bharat Bhavan

Bharat Bhavan is a multi-arts complex and museum facing the Upper Lake in Bhopal, designed by the architect Charles Correa. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi opened it on 13 February 1982. It grew out of a push in the early 1980s to build regional arts centres in state capitals, championed in Madhya Pradesh by the cultural administrator Ashok Vajpeyi, and it is funded by the state government but run by an autonomous trust. In its early years the theatre director B. V. Karanth staged many Hindi productions here.

The best-known wing is Roopankar, a museum of fine art whose permanent collection of tribal art was gathered early on by Jagdish Swaminathan. The complex also has galleries, printmaking and ceramics workshops, three stages (an open-air amphitheatre, a studio theatre and an auditorium) and Vagarth, a library and archive of Indian poetry and music. It hosts biennials of contemporary Indian art and of prints, and artists in residence, and has become a popular sight for visitors.