Jyotindra Jain is an Indian art and cultural historian, and museologist.
Education
Next he received an Austrian Government Post-Graduate Scholarship (1970–1972). This helped him do a Certificate in museulogy from the University of Vienna in 1972, which lead to a Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology, in 1972, and ethnographic field research in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa.
Career
A scholar on folk and ritual arts of India, he was the Director of the National Crafts Museum, New Delhi, Member Secretary and Professor (Cultural Archives), at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi, and also Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. He has published a number of books on Indian folk art, including, Ganga Devi: Tradition and Expression in Mithila Painting, Other Masters: Five Contemporary Folk and Tribal Artists of India and Kalighat Painting: Images from a Changing World. He did his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Bombay (now known as University of Mumbai), in 1963, followed by an M. A. in Ancient Indian Culture in 1965, also from the university.
Starting, 1975 and till 1978, he conducted field work in Gujarat to set up a Museum of Folk Art for the Shreyas Foundation.
Later, as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Heidelberg University (1972–1979), he taught for one year at the South Asia Institute at the university. In 1984, he became the Director of the National Crafts Museum, New Delhi.
In 1986 and 1989, he received fellowships from the Asian Cultural Council which allowed him to visit museums, observe the arts culture, and meet with museum specialists in the United States. Over the years, he has published a number of books including, Ganga Devi: Tradition and Expression in Mithila Painting (1996).
Other Masters: Five Contemporary Folk and Tribal Artists of India (1998).
Picture Showmen: Insights into the Narrative Tradition in Indian Art (1998). Kalighat Painting: Images from a Changing World (1999). Indian Popular Culture: ‘The Conquest of the World as Picture(2004), and India’s popular Culture.
Iconic spaces and fluid images (2007).
A member-secretary of IGNCA, Delhi, he curated a retrospective exhibition of photographs by Lala Deen Dayal at IGNCA, in 2010.