The Soemardja Gallery was established in its current location in 1993. As an oldest university gallery in Indonesia, the Soemardja Gallery serves as an educational complement to the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) Department of Fine Art and as a cultural resource for the institute and Bandung arts communities.
Soemardja Gallery is the oldest university gallery in Indonesia and in Bandung. Founded in 1974, the gallery is named after the late Syafe’i Soemardja, one of the architect of art education system in Indonesia.
The gallery is located on the north side of Bandung and easily reached by public and private transportation. The gallery building is a part of the Faculty of Fine Art and Design and located near the grass field of the East Aula, within the campus of Bandung Institute of Technology.
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As part of an educational institution, initially the gallery is a place for the academic circles of ITB to exhibit their works. Nowadays, it is a place for contemporary art exhibitions and for the students to learn and study the management of exhibitions and art programs through curatorial and volunteering works. To stimulate a wider general public on contemporary art issues, Soemardja Gallery also holds art programs such as discussions, seminars and workshops by artists and art experts in the national, regional and international fields. The gallery also accommodates other visual art practices, including industrial design, architecture, craft, photography, and visual culture in general.
Soemardja Gallery regularly runs art programs and exhibitions in co-operation with local, regional, international artists, various cultural foundation, and art institutions.
The exhibition space is approximately 150m2 and is 4m in height on one side and 2.4m on the other side. The space is equipped with lighting facilities and removable panels.
The mission of the Soemardja Gallery as university gallery in ITB is to encourage appreciation and understanding of art and its role in society through direct engagement with original works of art. The gallery stimulates active learning about art and the creative process through research, teaching, and dialogue among communities of ITB students, faculty, artists, curators, art critics, scholars, alumni, and the wider public. The Gallery organizes exhibitions and educational programs to offer enjoyment and encourage inquiry, while building and maintaining its collections in trust for future generations.
The Soemardja Gallery animates the intellectual life of the greater university community through exhibitions and programs exploring new, global perspectives on art and on art discourse. The Gallery mission is to provide exhibitions of the highest quality, to encourage intellectual and aesthetic growth through interpretive programming for these exhibitions, to promote critical dialogues and discussions between students, faculty and gallery communities and to continue maintaining and developing the gallery permanent art collection for exhibition, education and research purposes
