Introduction With Arindam Dutta's essay, we shift from the invocations of Indian art to the more generalized panoramas of empire and nationhood, and into object assemblages that ranged from 'industrial and decorative arts' to 'living craftsmen and performers' to historical and modem architectural structures. In juxtaposing the 1886 Colonial and 6 Indian Exhibition in London with the 1986 Festival of India shows abroad (particularly the architecture exhibition titled Vistara), the essay lays out the lineaments of both a comparative politics of display and of the shifting disciplinary practices of our art and architectural history. It takes us back and forth between the semantics of the visual displays and the broader configuration of economic and political motivations that ranged behind them. The strength of its argument lies in teasing out the contextual milieux which shaped each of the exhibitions: on the one hand, the era of imperial industrial expansion, and on the other, of the nation entering a new global economy. The latter scenario, in particular, is acted out in a tableau of patrons, sponsors, bureaucrats, culture-brokers, architects and designers, all converging on the exhibitionary realm of Vistara. There is no doubt that in working our way through this issue, we chart some dense and difficult routes. We keep battling with unfamiliar road signs, losing ourselves down unknown lanes. But we emerge, in the end, within a more open scholarly zone: one that is yet to be compartmentalized, boundaried and sealed. The Journal hopes to continue exploring these changing sites of Indian art history in a subsequent issue, that will move from 'canons and expositions' to the 'schools and movements' of contemporary India. TAPATI GUHA-THAKURTA Journal of Arts & Ideas