Something is Rotten in NGMA
The National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi has never failed to be the eye of a storm. There are several proposals from eminent artists and scholars to give a facelift to the NGMA. But who is there to implement them? Johny ML looks into the state of affairs at the NGMA.
What is ailing the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA)? When Girish Shahane, a Mumbai based art writer distributed a leaflet expressing the displeasure of the Mumbai art lovers on the mismanagement of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, many people took it as a gesture of cynicism and parochialism. Someone commented that it was the ‘Maratha’ lobby working behind the campaign. The excerpts from the leaflet were published in www.artconcerns.com. Prof.Rajeev Lochan, the director of NGMAs (Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore), who has been accused of lobbying for centralized powers, after seeing the excerpts from Shahane told me, “You see, running through the corridors of the government offices is not an easy job. It is like walking on a razor’s edge. You have to be sensitive and careful in dealing with the reluctant officials. Those people who raise cudgels against me do not understand the situation.”
I requested a rejoinder from Mr.Lochan. He said, “Why should I heed to these allegations? I don’t have time to send out rejoinders.” May be Prof. Lochan was in the best of his humility or in the best of his arrogance. It is very difficult to make out what is what as Prof.Lochan expresses his opinions in a jovial manner. Keeping silence on allegations is the best policy that one can adopt. But in this case, all is not well at Jaipur House (where the central NGMA is located). With the Raza Retrospective mounted for celebrating the veteran artist’s 85th birthday, Prof.Lochan and the NGMA, New Delhi once again has become the eye of the storm.
Sources say that the running of NGMA is in a fiasco with depleting standards of exhibitions. However, Prof. Rajeev Lochan says that these allegations are unfounded. “All the major exhibitions, including the national and the international ones are done during my term. Also the new wing of the Delhi NGMA is going to be opened in my time,” says Prof. Lochan. Still his detractors have several points to say. Excepting a few large scale shows including the Binode Behari Mukherjee Retrospective, other shows in NGMA have not made use of the curatorial expertise or the contemporary art historical knowledge.
NGMA has been accused of nurturing conservatism in its way of functioning. Young art historians and curators are not yet been contacted or contracted to do unconventional shows from the excellent collection that the institution has in its storage. New media art is an absolute no no as far as the curatorial projects of the NGMA are concerned. It should be noticed that all these happen during a time when Indian contemporary art is going places and in the international art scene new ways of curating are experimented and implemented.
The conservatism has also seeped into the collection of NGMA. The ill-documented works are gathering dust in its storages. Sadly, NGMA’s collection is not even digitized and made available to the public through the new modes of communication. The website of the NGMA would exemplify the general state of the institution. This website has not yet been updated since 2005. If you click open the collection section, it shows that the site is ‘HACKED BY XERON’. None has cared to rectify these problems.
Deficiency of staff is one of the prime reasons pointed out when issues come up. Interestingly, no vacancies have been advertised so far. Thanks to the centralization of power, the Mumbai NGMA is looked after by the keeper of the Delhi NGMA. In his absence, there is nobody to look after the precious collection in the Delhi NGMA. The same ad hoc-ism is seen in the running of Bangalore NGMA also. The officer in deputation runs the show there. So far the Bangalore NGMA, despite having an exquisite building acquired for it, has not attracted the national attention.
The website of NGMA boasts of conducting outreach programs and other public oriented art projects. Somehow, such programs remain in the web space or in files. They are not actually implemented. The two successful out reach programs done during the last year were by Prof. R.Sivakumar and by Prof.Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, both the curators of the Binode Behari Mukherjee retrospective. The lack of outreach programs should be seen in the context of private galleries conducting such programs successfully. Even the smallest of the private galleries in the west does lec-demos and walk through-s during exhibitions.
NGMA library is one of the victims of lethargy and official apathy. Once the collection in this library was held in high esteem. Now it has fallen in bad times. The library is not updated and the access has become all the more difficult thanks to official interference. An interested reader cannot take out books from the shelves and he has to write the name of the book and give it to a staff member. These unearthly measures prevent even the young students (who are ready to take any insult in pursuit of knowledge) from going to this library.
The lack of vision in policy for the present and future makes things go wrong in NGMA. Whenever ‘red-tape-ism’ is cited as the major reason what suffers is the ‘advices’ of the advisory committee comprising of eminent artists and scholars. Building up leadership is another area that NGMA lacks in. The new blood has to come in. A new set of art historians, critics and curators have to be brought into the scene and there should be policy for making these trained people to run the organization in the days to come.
Many scholars, art lovers and art workers have time and again demanded that the autonomy of the NGMA should be kept intact. Unfortunately, despite its claim as an autonomous body, in fact it functions as an extension of the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. If the Ministry of Culture feels that it has a right to meddle with the running of NGMA only because it is the sole funding agency for the institution, there should be a change in the funding structure. The corporate houses, national and international funding agencies, charitable trusts, industrialists and all should be roped in as funding sources.
The problem lies in where the bureaucrats feel that they know everything about art and its management. They feel that they sacrifice a lot of time and energy in saving Indian modern art. They even save some money for the government by cutting down the budgetary requests from eminent curators. They even try to save money by producing publications in below average quality. Transparency and decentralization are the need of the time. Prof. Rajeev Lochan, even if he feels that he does a lot of leg work between Jaipur house and Sastri Bhavan (where the Ministry of Culture is located), the outcomes show that the leg work alone cannot make things happen. It is high time that the art community in the country intervenes and facilitates changes in the running of the prestigious National Gallery of Modern Art.
PS: I had the opportunity to invite the eminent artist A.Ramachandran for inaugurating the Travancore Art Gallery, New Delhi in 2005. An IAS officer accompanied me to the artist’s residence for extending the official invitation. All the way I was trying to convince the officer that if we got a painting from the artist, the profit from it could have been used for the facelift of the gallery. On his part the IAS officer was demonstrating his art historical knowledge to me. At his residence, A.Ramachandran made an offer to us. Either he would come and light the lamp or he would give a painting of considerable size and worth. Before I could open my mouth, the officer said in all humility, ‘What work Sir, your presence is what valuable for us.” |
