January 22, 2024
Pelva Naik has been trained in the Dhrupad style of vocal music under the Dagar School of Indian Classical Music. She is a disciple of legendary Dhrupad maestro Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar and is a teacher of Art, Music and Humanities. She has performed in festivals and concerts in India and abroad. New Acropolis Culture Circle hosted a musical evening with [...]January 22, 2024
As far back as I can remember, Art has always been the first language that I could understand and express myself most naturally through. At an early age I was lucky to be exposed to the world of classical art and artists by my grandfather. Every summer vacation when I would arrive at my ancestral [...]November 1, 2023
The cyanotype process is a fascinating analogue photographic printing process that produces distinctive blue hued prints. It was one of the earliest non-silver processes used for creating photographs, and its invention marked a significant development in the history of photography. The cyanotype technology was invented by Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) – a remarkable British polymath, [...]January 10, 2023
Adam Williamson is an award-winning calligrapher and sculptor whose permanent public works can be viewed around the U.K. He is drawn to particular shapes and patterns that embody universal principles found in nature, made visible through the hands of craftsmen. Adam has been commissioned by many prestigious clients including Oxford University, Shakespeare’s Globe London, Westminster [...]October 9, 2022
“Projects must go beyond the functional to connect with the human spirit through poetic and philosophical underpinnings.” – The 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury Citation for Mr. Doshi On 30th October 2021, New Acropolis Culture Circle hosted renowned architect Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi, sharing his life experiences in a talk titled ‘A Lifetime of Architecture’. Charting [...]October 9, 2022
This article serves only as an introduction to the legendary origins, metaphysical purpose, and the traditional form used in the practice of Qawwali. It would be impossible to capture the cultural nuances, complex history, and social impact of the genre in this brief work, but I hope to share some principal themes that have emerged [...]July 6, 2022
‘Anthropocene’ is the term given to our post-industrial epoch, whereby human activity has irrevocably altered the planet and its environment. The ascent of the anthropocene poses challenges across all areas of life, leading to species loss and looming existential crisis for humanity. For artists, being less tangibly involved in solutions compared to other sciences, it [...]June 27, 2022
On 29th March 2021, The New Acropolis Culture Circle conducted an online session on Rabindranath Tagore’s Nobel Prize-winning work Gitanjali, with Prof. Ananda Lal. An authority on Tagore, he retired as Professor of English, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and directs Writers Workshop, the oldest continuing publisher of Indian poetry in English. The professor’s doctoral thesis had [...]June 27, 2022
Today, we often think of theatre as merely a form of “entertainment” or “fiction”, yet in many ancient traditions such as Greek, Indian, and Egyptian, theatre played a very important role in society. It was considered to be educational, even mystical, with the aim of allowing people to connect to some invisible, intangible principles of [...]May 25, 2022
If you were asked to name an artist of the Renaissance who was a superb painter, draughtsman, and skilled in science and mathematics, you would most likely think of Leonardo da Vinci. But there were others, and foremost among them was a German artist named Albrecht Dürer. Dürer was the leading artist of what is [...]April 30, 2022
There are many studies that show that involvement in the arts can lead to increased academic performance. Dance, drama, music, and the visual arts in the school curriculum enable children to develop self-confidence and self-understanding, problem solving skills, perseverance and discipline, focus and concentration, creativity, self-directed learning, collaboration and many others – these are [...]April 18, 2022
The Gothic period started at the beginning of the 12th century – in 1128, to be precise – when 9 knights came back from Jerusalem after spending 10 years in the Temple of Solomon. They were the first Knights Templar (from the Temple of Solomon). From that moment, in France and all over Europe, Gothic [...]