India, July 5 -- A nation carrying centuries of cultural history often struggles to figure out exactly how to handle it. Do we lock it behind glass, or do we let contemporary hands pull it apart and put it back together? Curator Priyanka Banerjee firmly chooses the latter. With 'Panorama 24' at the India Habitat Centre's Visual Art Gallery, she places our massive cultural legacy right next to fresh contemporary ideas. Rather than forcing a strict topic onto the walls, the collection draws its energy from letting wildly different styles clash and complement each other.

You feel this immediately when looking at Amit Kumar's watercolours. Entirely self-taught, Kumar turns his brush to the fragile elegance of bone china and blue pottery, for...