BHUBANESWAR: Courtesy a collaborative attempt of the city-based Orissa Modern Art Gallery and the newly founded Orissa Samskruti Academy, an exclusive library of art and culture with lending and documentation services, has been launched here recently.

Gallery director Tara Kant Parida informed that while the gallery has provided infrastructure facilities, the academy has arranged the resources through its members comprising culture writers, researchers, scholars and cultural institutions.

Scholar and culture critic Kedar Mishra is heading the project, he added.

Resource centre

The library and documentation centre was being designed as an exclusive resource centre on Orissa's art, culture and heritage, said Mr Mishra.

"It would serve the artistes, writers, journalists, researchers and connoisseurs of Orissa culture in the most organised way.

We have been collecting newspaper clippings, thesis from researchers, photographs, CDs, books and magazines related to Orissa's literature, dance, music, theatre, cinema, art and heritage," he revealed and added that the academy has plans to extend accommodation and guide facilities for scholars and researchers coming from outside the State and abroad.

The academy would offer condensed courses for appreciation of art, dance, music and cinema apart from foreign languages and calligraphy, Mr. Mishra informed. Training programmes

The course models adopted by the National Museum and National Film Archives of India for extension of education on culture and cinema were being followed for formulation of the programmes, he said and added that efforts were on to collaborate with different cultural, educational and research institutions of the state to make the activities broad based.

Commencing from April, a monthly meet-the-artiste session will be initiated at the gallery where an interactive session will be held between an artiste and the journalists and critics writing on culture, it was learnt.

As part of its publication programme, the academy would bring out directories of artistes of Orissa apart from monographs of legendary personalities, Mr. Mishra said.

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