MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design has announced a forthcoming new exhibition that will examine the way in which the modern architecture of former colonial enterprises helped shape the post-independence era of self-determination politics in latter South Asia.

Comprised of over 200 photos, architectural models, and other media taken from institutions in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, the exhibition highlights key projects from some of the region’s most prominent designers, including Mahendra Raj and 2018 Pritzker laureate Balkrishna Doshi. 

The exhibition was organized by MoMA’s design curators Martino Stierli and Evangelos Kotsioris along with visiting curators Anoma Pieris of the University of Melbourne and former department staffer Sean Anderson. The team organized the exhibition around four curatorial themes connected by a common thread that demonstrates the role material cultures took in forming an “experimental expression” of modern architecture in the region fueled in part by its abundance of pre-industrial labor.

The first section focuses on Industry and Infrastructure to highlight the economic changes brought on by projects like the Dudhsagar Dairy Complex Functionalist icon Achyut Kanvinde completed in 1973. A large section on Institution Building charts the development of public facilities like theaters and soccer stadiums as talismans for the overall transformation of civil society in each country. An Education section chronicles the direct impacts that investment into college and university building engendered. Finally, a section on Political Spaces examines the place of civic architecture as symbols of societal progress that have endured years after the fraught post-independence turmoil was resolved.