Art Beyond Canvas
Art Beyond Canvas reimagined the legacies of Nicholas Roerich and Amrita Sher-Gil as a multi sensory evening of fragrance, atmosphere and storytelling. Held on the lawns of the National Gallery of Modern Art as an invite only event, it invited creators and cultural tastemakers to walk the galleries, engage with the works and take part in bespoke fragrance creation inspired by the artists’ philosophies and visual languages.
The evening extended the gallery beyond its walls and made modern Indian art feel contemporary and tangible. It was conceived, designed and produced by Henceforth end to end, from concept and scent design through collateral, creator curation, hosting and documentation.
Art is remembered through what we see, and its emotional memory lives well beyond the visual. Set within the historic spaces of NGMA, the event turned paintings into sensory environments: colour became fragrance notes, landscapes became mood and artistic themes became experiential storytelling. The objective was twofold. To deepen emotional engagement with modern Indian art by moving beyond passive viewing, and to extend the museum experience into contemporary digital culture, so that new audiences met Roerich and Sher-Gil as living inspirations.
Experience design and event concept. Olfactory design with custom scent kits built from the artists’ palettes. Event collateral and institutional keepsakes. Creator curation, invitation and on ground hosting with guided walkthroughs. Content direction and shot planning. Social campaign and amplification. Press and documentation.
More than twenty creators took part on the ground, selected for alignment with heritage, culture and visual storytelling ahead of reach. The roster ran from 27,500 to 259,000 followers and included voices from art, lifestyle and culture whose existing work already captured architecture, light and atmosphere. Each was walked through the galleries and given time with the works before filming.
Creator content reached 474,000 plus views, 8,000 plus likes and 120 plus stories. The evening was carried by the creators’ own audiences and by cultural press well beyond the night, and it gave the gallery a property to restage.
The evening was built from the paintings outward. Each fragrance began as a reading of a canvas, its colour temperature and its mood, developed with the perfumer into a note structure before any invitation was written. The guest list followed the same discipline: creators were chosen for the way they already photographed light and architecture, then hosted and walked through the galleries with the scent kits in hand. Documentation was planned shot by shot so that the gallery held usable content the morning after.
A second edition, Mixologists and Maestros, held the structure and changed the sense from scent to taste. Art Beyond Canvas is now a repeatable cultural property for NGMA, one that can be staged again around a new collection, a new season or a new sense with the institution’s scholarship intact each time.
