Mr Raman Siva Kumar was awarded a Small Study and Research Grant (India) 1992-93, when a Lecturer at Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, for research and documentation of artists associated with the Santiniketan art movement.
Since 1981, Professor Siva Kumar has been teaching art history at Kala Bhavan where he has held several offices, including that of the Principal. His writings on Abaninindranath Tagore and the Santiniketan artists have contributed a new perspective on them by shifting the critical focus from nationalist revivalism to a context sensitive modernism.
Among his curated exhibitions Santiniketan: the Making of a Contextual Modernism commissioned to mark the fifty years of Indian independence, Benodebehari: A Centenary Retrospective (co-curated with Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh and The Last Harvest: Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore commissioned to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Tagore are considered landmark exhibitions. The reputed Indian Magazine, Frontline reported, “The best show was the one curated by R. Siva Kumar of Santiniketan, ‘The Making of a Contextual Modernism’, exhibiting about a hundred works each of Nandalal Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Kinker Baij and Benode Bihari Mukherhee. The Last Harvest was shown at ten major museums of the world including the Museum of Asian Art, Berlin; Asia Society, New York; National Museum of Korea, Seoul; Victoria and Albert Museum London; The Art Institute of Chicago; Petit Palais, Paris; National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome; National Visual Arts Gallery, Kuala Lumpur; McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ontaior; and National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi.