Bengal Foundation: Four decades of building rooms for Bangladeshi art

More than half a century after independence, the very country which laid its foundation on Bengali nationalism and culture still has to fight for that culture to exist in the public sphere. In this long-standing friction, a few institutions have stood as vanguards amidst the attacks and the vandalism. If Chhayanaut is the melodic heartbeat of the Bengali soul, the Bengal Foundation is perhaps its multifaceted guardian; a space where the canvas, the craft, the cinema lens, and the architect's compass all converge to remind us who we are.

In the early seventies, long before galleries and music festivals entered Dhaka's art culture scene, Abul Khair was simply a young man fresh out of Dhaka University, building a business in a country still finding its footing. But while his days were spent in the grit of industry, his mind was being shaped by someone who lived a world entirely different from his.

That person was his uncle, Abdur Razzaq, a scholar known as Gyantapas, the seeker of knowledge and a man whose quiet conviction and moral clarity left a mark on nearly everyone who passed through his orbit. 

It was Razzaq who first drew Abul Khair's attention towards art and culture, not as a mere hobby but as something closer to civic duty. That influence sat with him for years. He began collecting art and his interest kept deepening. Hence, in the late eighties, he gave it a name and an infrastructure. Bengal Foundation.

What he set up was based on a fairly simple belief, that exposure to the arts does something to a society beyond entertainment, that it builds compassion and pushes a culture towards something better than where it started. The Foundation has stayed independently funded through its own Board of Trustees since that very beginning, which has allowed it to avoid the kind of strings that come attached to grants and sponsorships.

In 1987, Bengal Arts Programme was launched with a landmark exhibition of S.M. Sultan. At that time, Sultan's raw, muscular depictions of the peasantry were a revelation. More than an exhibition, it was the first brick in what would become a sanctuary for the country's creative spirit. 

Rezwanul Karim Chowdhury, who leads communications for the Foundation, put it plainly when asked what keeps an institution like this moving after forty years. He said, "By nature it is a multidisciplinary space". "We aren't just looking at one thing; we are constantly working with different facets and trends of art and culture. We've been doing this for four decades now. Right now, we have an exhibition running, and our regular work continues. We believe that art and culture are what help a nation's consciousness to develop." And so no matter what comes, he says, "in any situation, we intend to keep working, unapologetically".

A few months back when mazars came under attack and Baul musicians, custodians of a centuries old mystic tradition that sits uneasily with a certain group of extremists, found themselves targeted, along with women more broadly, in a wave of intolerance that rattled the cultural sphere. Bengal Foundation's response to that rather than a statement or a press release, it was a music festival. Rezwanul recalled that "During those very days, we staged the event regardless, and on two nights of that festival, as the headliners we placed a Baul artist and a woman artist at the very centre of the stage." He adds, "To us, continuing the work is the protest."

A sanctuary with many rooms

The Foundation's work has never been about a single gallery. It has been about building an entire ecosystem where none existed. The Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts opened in 2000, at a moment when artists in this country had almost nowhere proper to show their work and even less chance of making a living from it. 

They took the country's visual art to the Venice Biennale in 2011, but they also kept their eyes on the roots. They supported the S M Sultan Bengal Arts College in Narail and established the Safiuddin Bengal Printmaking Studio in Dhaka. By 2016, once they felt the local art market was strong enough to survive on its own, they did something unusual for a successful institution: they stepped away from the commercial side of things.

By 2016, the Foundation made a quiet but significant pivot, stepping back from its commercial arm to focus instead on research and inquiry, the kind of work that does not always show up on a balance sheet but tends to outlast everything else.

This same spirit of public service led to the creation of Bengal Boi in 2017. In a city like Dhaka, where open, secular spaces are vanishing under the weight of concrete and commercialism, Bengal Boi was a gift. It was not just a shop to buy books; it was a community space. With its free library, its café, and its dedicated areas for children and poetry recitals, it became a place where you did not have to be "someone" to sit and think. It brought back the tradition of the Adda, the long-form conversation that has always been the fuel of Bengali intellect.

The Foundation's Bengal Parampara Sangeetalay has trained musicians under masters of classical and folk traditions, while the Bengal Classical Music Festival grew into something almost improbable: among the largest classical music gatherings anywhere, measured by the number of performers sharing a single stage over consecutive nights.

While many institutions focus only on the "high arts," the Foundation has spent over a decade working with the National Craft Council to ensure that the traditional artisan is not forgotten. Through the Master Craftsperson Awards and the craft fairs held at Bengal Shilpalay, they have tried to bridge the gap between the weaver at the loom and the urban consumer. It is an effort to restore the artisan's confidence, to remind them that their work — whether it is a Jamdani saree or a piece of pottery — is a vital part of the national identity.

Then there is the world of film. The Bengal Film Development Forum, launched in 2013, was born out of a desire to fix the narrative cracks in the local industry. Through the Young Filmmakers Project, they have been funding and producing documentaries and features that the mainstream industry often ignores. They are not looking for the next blockbuster; they are looking for directors who have something to say about the reality of life in Bangladesh, helping them develop the technical skills and the scripts to say it clearly.

Everything the Foundation does — from a film workshop to a Baul festival — is tied back to that original vision of Professor Abdur Razzaq. He was a man who believed in moral clarity and academic excellence, but he also believed in the power of humanity and integrity. He understood that culture is not just about what we do on a stage; it is about the movements and forces that demand social justice and autonomy for the people.

Rezwanul Karim Chowdhury's stance of being "unapologetic" is a direct continuation of that defiance. It is the belief that culture is not a luxury we can afford only in peaceful times; it is the very thing that helps us survive the difficult ones.