Ruchika Jain

Biography

Ruchika Jain holds an MSc in Cultural Industries and Entrepreneurship from the University of Nottingham, UK (2015–16), a cross-disciplinary program that offers a rich exploration of cultural policy, art history, innovation management, technology for arts and business, project management, and marketing. This program deepened her understanding of key cultural policy issues and provided critical insights into the processes of cultural production. Complementing this, her undergraduate degree in Visual Arts from The IIS University, Jaipur, India, has significantly shaped her curatorial approach, particularly in prioritizing visitor engagement and interpretation.

Over the past six and a half years at the BDL Museum, she has played an integral role in various facets of museum work, including exhibition, collection research, education, and outreach. She has worked on several contemporary and collection focused exhibitions at the Museum. Several of these contemporary exhibitions were curated as part of the Museum’s ongoing Engaging Traditions series, which invites contemporary artists to engage with the Museum’s history, collection, and archives. This series aims not only to decolonize the Museum space but also to offer visitors multiple readings of the collection, encouraging critical reflection on both historical narratives and contemporary realities. Currently, she is working on several upcoming exhibitions at the Museum.

She has also contributed entries in the Museum's publication 'Mumbai : A City Through Objects - 101 Stories from the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum', edited by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta. The book was published in 2022 to commemorate the Museum's 150th anniversary. The book tells this story of the city Mumbai through the Museum's collection. Through in-depth research, the book aims to bring voices that were denied access in the past, giving long overdue recognition to the craftspeople and artists.

Ruchika Jain, Curator at Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai, India, has been awarded by the Getty Foundation.