To show case the golden heritage antiques and the evacuation collected from various parts of the country, the Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts has organised a 39 day-long exhibition on the theme “The World of Rock Art” to be held at the Himachal State Museum Shimla from tomorrow.
The exhibition is being organized by the Indira Gandhi National Centre of Arts (IGNCA) New Delhi in collaboration with the Himachal State Museum (HSM) Shimla. Interacting with the media in Shimla today, the IGNCA project Director Dr. B L Malla said that it was organized to sensitize people about this first creative art of humankind so that any rock art if any in the State does not perish undiscovered.
The exhibition would be inaugurated by the Vidhan Sabha speaker Brij Bihari Butail. Dr. Malla said that the exhibition on the world of rock art would showcase a thematic universality of this art form, to which both tangible and intangible aspects of the heritage associated.
IGNCA under its national programme Adi Drishya (the primeval vision) has so far initiated the daunting task of systemically documenting the rock art sites in 14 states of India including Himachal, he added.
On the opening day and the next day two special lectures will be delivered by Dr O C Handa renowned Archaeologist in Himachal Pradesh on “Rock Art in Western Himalayan Region : An overview and Dr. Hari Chauhan curator Himachal State Museum, Shimla on “Rock Art of Lahaul-Spiti”, he added.
Besides, two days children workshops will also be organized on June 15 and June 16, he said.
Hari Chauhan disclosed that in Himachal the major rock art sites are concentrated in the Spiti valley of Lahaul-Spiti district of the region.
“These rock faces in the valley are veritable storehouses of the geological history of the Himalayas, dating back to 500 million years. Spiti has a very rich repository of rock art, primarily consisting of petroglyphs on boulders and stone blocks,” he said.
He disclosed that the rock art in the area has neither been fully explored nor proper studies have been undertaken earlier.
