Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts

After a succession of specific projects starting with the support to a landmark S.M. Sultan exhibition in Dhaka in 1987, Bengal Foundation formalised its engagement with arts in 2000.

That year it simultaneously set up a dedicated arts programme to design various nonprofit activities in the field, and it opened the commercial Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts. The goal for a non-profit foundation to open a commercial operation was to contribute to the development of a local art market from which artists could draw revenue and support their practice. The decision was also made with the ambition that the production of exhibitions with the highest standards of quality and their contextualisation in dedicated publications would foster the understanding and appreciation of arts locally. The opening of a second commercial gallery, Bengal Art Lounge, in another area of Dhaka in 2011 was made to broaden the same aims. Over the years, both galleries produced dozens of exhibitions and participated to various international art fairs.

That year it simultaneously set up a dedicated arts programme to design various nonprofit activities in the field, and it opened the commercial Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts. The goal for a non-profit foundation to open a commercial operation was to contribute to the development of a local art market from which artists could draw revenue and support their practice. The decision was also made with the ambition that the production of exhibitions with the highest standards of quality and their contextualisation in dedicated publications would foster the understanding and appreciation of arts locally. The opening of a second commercial gallery, Bengal Art Lounge, in another area of Dhaka in 2011 was made to broaden the same aims. Over the years, both galleries produced dozens of exhibitions and participated to various international art fairs. In parallel, the Arts programme multiplied non-profit initiatives such as the opening of practice spaces to encourage and facilitate the development of the arts, the organisation of workshops, residencies and art camps, the support to specific projects such as the first-ever participation of Bangladesh to the Venice Biennale in 2011 and the production of noncommercial exhibitions with an educational aim. In early 2016, with a small but robust art market solidly rooted in Bangladesh, Bengal Foundation decided to close its commercial operations and to expand the non-for-profit activities of its Arts programme. Today the programme supports the arts ecosystem at large, including artists but also curators, researchers and critical writers. Under this holistic approach, it invites all actors in the field to engage on a day-to-day basis with the activities of uncompromising quality it strives to develop.