New Delhi: The capital added another first to its list of art initiatives by throwing open the first art bookstore-cum-reading room here Friday.

Set up by the Vadehra Gallery, the store in Defence Colony also has a large reading room sponsored by The Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art.

As part of its opening, the gallery also organised a panel discussion - “Archiving Contemporary Art” - that stressed on the need and ways to archive contemporary Asian art and provide a database to collectors, dealers, artists, researchers and the industry.

The speakers included Claire Hsu from the Hong Kong-based Asia Art Archive, Austria-based scholar and archaeologist Eric Neumayer, who has collected extensive material on prehistoric art, painter Raja Ravi Varma and Indian popular culture, and Annapurna Garimella from Art, Resources and Teaching in Bangalore.

Speaking about the importance of archiving the large body of contemporary art in Asia, mostly from China, India, South Korea and the Philippines, Hsu said the Asia Art Archive was trying to do its best as a collectors' endeavour to spread awareness, preserve and catalogue contemporary art.

Beginning as a personal project in 2000, it is now one of the leading archives in the continent with more than 20,000 titles accessible to the people free of charge, both online and offline.

Hsu said the archive was carrying on several projects like Shifting Sites: Cultural Desire and the Museum, What Is Your Dream Museum, All You wanted To Know About International Art Biennials and Archiving Contemporary Art: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.