Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru, India: India's first major private museum is a must-see

In the 30 years to 2020, India lost 30 per cent of its cultural heritage as a result of its pursuit of economic growth, according to leading Indian philanthropic fund, Dasra, which means "enlightened giving" in Sanskrit.

Industrialist and philanthropist Abhishek Poddar says this has a lot to do with art not being a priority in contemporary Indian culture.

"There's lack of conservation and people are insensitive to this," he says. "We face such little attention to the arts, and especially in the Indian education system which is more about rote learning, not imaginative thinking."

Poddar is a renowned creative thinker, and had been collecting Indian art since high school, building up a significant collection of South Asian art, craft and antiquities, including contemporary works and photography. He is one of the country's most prominent collectors.

Determined to expand his country's appreciation of its heritage, he decided to use his own collection to found India's first major private museum. Its mission? To make art and culture more accessible to Indian people.

That institution, the Museum of Art & Photography, or MAP, has just opened in Bengaluru, the capital of the Indian southern state, Karnataka.

It's one to put on the itinerary for Australians who might be taking advantage of Qantas's only recently launched direct flights between Sydney and Bengaluru.

While many will be using the flight to access more touristy parts of South India such as Kerala and Goa, MAP is one of many features of this lovely city that make it worth spending a couple of days at least.

Bengaluru already had several government art galleries, but none had made any great inroads into contemporary art. Nor, Poddar argues, have Indian galleries and museums in general adapted their approaches to meet international standards and contemporary expectations of interactivity, engagement, and digital access.