Gandharan Sculptures, Chandigarh Museum

Over the course of 2 days in March 2025, five Gandharan sculptures were digitized using photogrammetry as a part of a preliminary investigation, which will lead to a proposal supporting the capture metrologically accurate 3D models of Silk Road cultural artifacts from sites and museums all over the world. These assets would be available for free public access to encourage comparative studies into the transmission of artistic and cultural conventions along the Silk Road, and to facilitate open scholarly engagement with material that would otherwise remain physically inaccessible to most researchers worldwide.

This project is being planned in collaboration with members of the University of California San Diego, University of the Aegean in Greece, the University of Henan in China, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and with the Central Asian Archaeological Landscapes project at University College London.

Special thanks to Ms. Seema Gera, the curator, and the rest of the cooperative staff at Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, and to the Kinsella Innovation fund at UC San Diego.

See full report at:

Agarwal, A., McAvoy, S. P, Rissolo, D., & Kuester, F. (2026). Field Report: Gandharan Sculptures Mar 24th – 25th 2026 Government Museum & Art Gallery, Chandigarh, India. UC San Diego: Cultural Heritage Engineering Initiative (CHEI) at Calit2. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3kh8s354