• Baroda, a leading center for the arts, spans plural domains

As the writers approach Baroda from different vantage points, they render its story in unique ways: as first-person accounts, and as art critics, anthropologists and historians. Early artists, craftsmen and photographers engage with Sayajirao Gaekwad III; the royal patron in turn represents these practitioners at international exhibitions; itinerant builders and established European architects contribute to a fast-modernizing princely state; artists, art teachers and administrators set new directions for a Faculty of Fine Arts (FFA) in post-Independence Baroda/India; patrons, gallerists, scholars and artists shape contemporary Baroda's artistic culture.

Priya Maholay-Jaradi, former Curator at the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore, is an independent art historian. She has an MA in art history from SOAS, London and a PhD from the National University of Singapore. She has initiated a post-doctoral project, Asian Collection Studies at the IIAS, Leiden (2013). She is the author of Portrait of a Community: Paintings and Photographs of the Parsees (2002) and Parsi Portraits from the Studio of Raja Ravi Varma (2011) and a forthcoming book on Baroda's modernity and nationalism.