Gallery FREEDOM opened under the auspices of Voluntary Health Association of India in January 1998 with the inaugural exhibition ‘India after Independence’. The chief guest on the occasion was the eminent artist B. C. Sanyal. The exhibition showcased a wide range of Indian post-independence art and included prominent names of contemporary art; Arup Das, Dhiraj Choudhury, Gogi Saroj Pal, Kavita Nayar, Madhvi Parekh, Manu Parekh, Niren Sen Gupta, Paramjit Singh, Phalguni Dasgupta, Ramnath Parischa, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Shamshad Hussain, Subroto Kundu, Sudip Roy, Ved Nayar among others.

The Gallery has over the years been designing & executing collaborative projects with visual artists and other creative people of the country. The gallery has organised many artists’ camps, workshops and exhibitions, with the multifold purpose of engendering meaningful interactive encounters between creative individuals and underprivileged communities, between creative people of different disciplines, between artists and the uninitiated as well as for generating resources for various social causes addressed by VHAI.

In 2000, Gallery Freedom organized several artists’ workshops in different parts of the country- including in the remote areas of VHAI projects- in Manipur, Rajasthan, Orissa…, where the artists got the opportunity to actually live in proximity to and interact with the local people. These finally culminated in a mega event at the Lalit Kala Akademi Delhi, in an exhibition cum art-mela called ‘Their Story’ where more than 50 artists participated. The idea behind this project was to bring to limelight the ordinary people living in these disaster-affected areas under extraordinary circumstances, displaying extraordinary fortitude.

In 2002, Gallery Freedom put up a major group exhibition- ‘Navarasa’- of many significant names in contemporary Indian art- Jogen Choudhury, Arpita Singh, Paritosh sen, Arpana Cau, Raza, Atul Dodia, Amit Ambalal, J.Swaminathan, Sunil Das, Jitish Kalat, Anjolie Ela Menon etc at the Visual Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre-. The exhibition was curated by Dr. Alka Pande and was put up in collaboration with Gallery Apparao.

In 2002, another major exhibition organized by VHAI was the ‘Kutch- A Commemorative’ exhibition curated once again by Dr.Alka Pande, at the India Habitat Centre.

In 2003, Gallery Freedom put up ‘Continuity and Change’ at the Visual Art Gallery, India Habitat, curated by Prof. Niren Sengupta.

At present the gallery is working on several projects about which one may learn in the ‘Forthcoming Events’ section.

Exhibitions Their Story - 2000, at Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi. Navarasaa - 2002, at Visual Art Gallery, IHC, Delhi. Continuity and Change- 2003, at Visual Art Gallery, IHC, Delhi.       Kutch-A Commemorative 2002, IHC, Delhi.