No room for outsiders

Like most scuffles in Mumbai the one unfolding at the NGMA Mumbai has been about space After it changed hands in October last year with the appointment of IRS officer Anita Rupavataram as its new director it had a change of heart Its advisory committee whose term ended on November 15 had approved four retrospectives for 2019 Navjot Altaf which ended on January 25 Prabhakar Barwe ongoing Mehlli Gobhai to be held in MarchApril and Sudhir Patwardhan DecemberJanuary 2020It had also sanctioned major exhibitions by artist SG Vasudev and one on khadi in collaboration with Paramparik Karigar The new leadership with a helping hand from NGMA Delhi decided that the NGMA Mumbai will be reserved to host NGMA Delhis permanent collection while external exhibitions will be restricted to the dome areaWhen actor Amol Palekar raised objections against it recently he was shushed quite inelegantly What the NGMAs failed to grasp is that a retrospective is the lifes work of an artist It needs room it needs breathing space it needs strong curation and in a city like Mumbai it needs the backing of public institutionsPrabhakar Barwes below ongoing exhibition is spread across the NGMA Mumbai while the dome is only onesixth of the gallerys area PicsAshish Raje and Bodhana Arts and Research FoundationThe role of retrospectivesNancy Adajania who curated the Altaf retrospective and will curate the forthcoming Patwardhan retrospective and is cocurator of the Gobhai retrospective says A retrospective reveals the evolving patterns in an artists oeuvre It allows us to contextualise the adjacencies continuities and ruptures in an artists practice It enables us to look back and to look deep and to read art history against the grain This is very important because a retrospective can actually act as a pedagogical tool to start a conversation about eclipsed histories and practicesPatwardhan who held a kindof retrospective in Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal last year with 300 works says After painting for 50 years you want to put things together and trace your own development See what youve done right what youve done wrong Thats the personal use of a retrospective for an artist For the art scene it offers an opportunity to reassess the contribution of an individual artist in a holistic way Here he stresses on the Barwe show which is an absolutely landmark show So many young people dont know the work of Barwe After he died there hasnt been any major show And that shows the importance of retrospectivesAshvin Rajagopalan director of Piramal Art Foundation who curated the SH Raza retrospective last year says A retrospective is visibility into the range of emotions and ideas of an artist And a single floor isnt enough to exhibit that rangeNancy Adajania a curator at a walkthrough of the Navjot Altaf retrospective at the NGMA Mumbai PicThe Guild art galleryMore headroomShireen Gandhy whose Gallery Chemould is heading the Gobhai retrospective says Obviously we cant put a retrospective of any artist in one section Everyone thinks Mehlli is only an abstract painter but he was also an illustrator A retrospective allows artists to be shown in their entirety There are drawings notebooks theres a whole life before that There are so many stories to be told through other ways of materialIn fact sometimes even a single venue isnt enough Roobina Karode director and chief curator at the Delhibased Kiran Nadar Museum of Art KNMA whose Nalini Malani retrospective ran through the year in 2014 says Because she Malani had a lot of immersive installations we thought it was best to do it in three chaptersOtherwise we would not be able to show more than 15 of her installations in one go As someone who has curated seven retrospectives at KNMA she knows how tough they are to pull off Nobody has an entire collection of an artists work So you need to source many artworks from different places cities and countries And you need to do all that through loans and insurances That takes a hell of a time effort and investment Its also cumbersome in the way that 100 works are not always constant or the same The artist is evolving and so is their work That makes a retrospective a lot more challenging But if you want to bring certain art practices of your country into focus and the role and contribution of certain artists into public consciousness you need to do a retrospective In such a scenario the NGMAs thought a retrospective could be fitted into a matchboxThe way to resolve thisThe NGMA Mumbais body is in Mumbai but its voice is in Delhi When we reach out to Rupavataram were redirected to Adwaita Gadanayak director at NGMA Delhi who says There was a discussion about assigning only the dome but if the artist community does not want that we wont We will do as the artist community desires This is a space for artists We were trying out an experiment because we have 18000 artworks We want our permanent collection to be shown to the publicAdajania says This is not an argument against the display of the permanent collection because NGMA Delhi has a fantastic collection But these periodic rehangs have to be wellcurated According to Patwardhan the NGMA Mumbai is being so closefisted about the space because In the case of Mumbai we do not have a separate exhibition space while Delhi and Bengaluru do So in Mumbai they should allot it timewise They can alternate an exhibition from their collection with another exhibition from outsideGadanayak seems to have read Patwardhans mind because he tells us If the artist says they can display their works in 50 per cent of the space we will use the remaining space for the permanent collection Even if he wants the entire space we will agree There is no controversy I have already said that the decision of the advisory committee will stand till December 2019 I have spoken to the NGMA Mumbai director and said that the shows will go on as planned The letters must have been dispatched to the respective artists They havent reached the artists as yet but everyone involved is keeping their fingers crossedIt is Mumbais NGMAWhile this issue may have been put to bed theres a niggling worry about the role of the NGMA in the city Gadanayak is vague about the formation of the new advisory committee It will take time maybe 1015 more days he says Will the new members have the citys best interests at heart The NGMA is already displaying troubling signs When Patwardhan had sent his application with Adajanias name as curator hed been told they wanted to work with only inhouse curators Patwardhan says This is stupid It wont work because they dont have the manpower or infrastructure to support curatorsThere seems to be a thinking in the NGMA that they should not collaborate that private galleries are profitoriented and NGMA is a nonprofit organisation That is entirely a wrong way of thinking because in India galleries have played a very important role in the absence of other public institutionsHow badly the city needs its public institutions is underlined by Adajania when she says Our art world is insular and elitist Those who visit private galleries often know each other But when you have a retrospective in a public institution like the NGMA you are opening the show to a wider range of people across class caste and regional lines And that is why this space is of great significance to us as citizensIn his defence Gadanayak repeats the grievance on every Mumbaikars lips In Mumbai the space is very small that is why there is a problem If we get a larger space we will display it like a kings courtCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates