No room for outsiders

As the NGMA Mumbai faces heat over its missteps, such as reserving only one floor for the Sudhir Patwardhan and Mehlli Gobhai retrospectives, the art fraternity says, it needs to introspect as well

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 March-April) and Sudhir Patwardhan (December-January 2020).

It 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 Delhi's permanent collection, while external exhibitions will be restricted to the dome area.

When 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 life's 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 institutions.

Prabhakar Barwe's (below) ongoing exhibition is spread across the NGMA Mumbai, while the dome is only one-sixth of the gallery's area. Pics/Ashish Raje and Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation

The role of retrospectives
Nancy Adajania, who curated the Altaf retrospective and will curate the forthcoming Patwardhan retrospective and is co-curator of the Gobhai retrospective, says, "A retrospective reveals the evolving patterns in an artist's oeuvre. It allows us to contextualise the adjacencies, continuities and ruptures in an artist's 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 practices."

Patwardhan, who held a "kind-of" 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 you've done right, what you've done wrong. That's 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 don't know the work of Barwe. After he died, there hasn't been any major show. And that shows the importance of retrospectives."

Ashvin 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 isn't enough to exhibit that range.

Nancy Adajania, a curator, at a walkthrough of the Navjot Altaf retrospective at the NGMA Mumbai. Pic/The Guild art gallery

More headroom
Shireen Gandhy, whose Gallery Chemould is heading the Gobhai retrospective, says, "Obviously, we can't 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, there's a whole life before that. There are so many stories to be told through other ways of material."

In fact, sometimes even a single venue isn't enough. Roobina Karode, director and chief curator at the Delhi-based 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 chapters.

Otherwise, 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 artist's 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. It's 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 matchbox.

The way to resolve this
The NGMA Mumbai's body is in Mumbai, but its voice is in Delhi. When we reach out to Rupavataram, we're 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 won't]. We will do as the artist community desires. This is a space for artists. We were trying out an experiment because we have 18,000 artworks. We want our permanent collection to be shown to the public."

Adajania says, "This is not an argument against the display of the permanent collection because NGMA Delhi has a fantastic collection. But these periodic re-hangs have to be well-curated." According to Patwardhan, the NGMA Mumbai is being so close-fisted 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 time-wise. They can alternate an exhibition from their collection, with another exhibition from outside."

Gadanayak seems to have read Patwardhan's 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 haven't reached the artists as yet, but everyone involved is keeping their fingers crossed.

It is Mumbai's NGMA
While this issue may have been put to bed, there's 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 10-15 more days," he says. Will the new members have the city's best interests at heart? The NGMA is already displaying troubling signs. When Patwardhan had sent his application with Adajania's name as curator, he'd been told they wanted to work with only in-house curators. Patwardhan says, "This is stupid. It won't work because they don't have the manpower or infrastructure to support curators.

There seems to be a thinking in the NGMA that they should not collaborate, that private galleries are profit-oriented, and NGMA is a non-profit 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 institutions."

How 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 citizens."

In his defence, Gadanayak repeats the grievance on every Mumbaikar's 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 king's court."

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