KNMA at 15: A museum in speed

She sets a new record for Indian art by purchasing a lost MF Hussain painting before the week. Village travel In the sale of a Christie for ₹ 119 crore, Kiran Nadar was sitting in the conference room of his museum’s Saket Outpost, how his art collection style increased. “When I am gathering an artist, I try to make it deeply,” she said with a smile. “Whether it is Hussain or Suja or Raza, if I had 10 tasks, I now have 50-100 work.”

This was the inaugural day of the lead-pretense on poet-pantter-critic Ghulam Mohammad Sheikh, and the museum was Abuzh with activity-the artist stepped himself as working. The world within the worldMany have been borrowed, but a significant part comes from the individual collection of Nadar, which includes Sleepless cityWhich he achieved the first task, and KavadThe most prominent of his works.

Kavad: Yatra Tirtha: Home
Photo Credit: Etiquette The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

“The way he draws intimacy in the rooms, the way he brings out the colors of nature, he always surprised me,” he said with a smile first, the native in a sapphire blue suit himself. Now he said: “I had no background of art, so all this is self-contained. My interests have become more diverse. For someone who started with 500 works and has increased more than 15,000 in the last 10-12 years, it is a huge jump.”

This is a busy season of big steps for Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, which is now in its 15th year. A few days ago, their second version legacy Series – A series dedicated to honoring permanent Indian families in performing arts – left at the Triveni Kala Sangam in Delhi with acclaimed. Sarangi In a conversation with Mastro Murad Ali Khan concert from Mordabad home and a conversation with writer-composer Anish Pradhan.

Murad Ali Khan | Photo Credit: Etiquette The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

This was the first time before the KNMA Theater Festival in beautiful nursery, where 13 plays discovered the idea of ​​”power of vulnerability”, including folk rituals Beesu Kamsail And a contemporary revaluation The Arabian Nights,

Stunned ladkianAagaaz Repertory, Delhi | Photo Credit: Etiquette The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

And now not far away. Now Kannama’s long stored journey launches Peace Day resistance-a new museum-end designed by Ghana-Bitish architect Sir David Adjay.

Model of new Knama Museum | Photo Credit: Rakesh Anand

Liquidity and social capital

“We started in 2010 in Noida, with a show Open the door“Missed Nadar.” My collection was not particularly very large, but I knew that I wanted to open a museum. We quickly realized that Noida was a wrong place for footfall. In 2011, we opened KNMA in Saket in a mall, because we thought we would find footfalls coming to the mall, but unfortunately this mall was never populated in the way it was expected. We had to work to make it. ,

A runaway team, including Nadar, Museum curator Rubina Crores and some others, did this through a rigorous educational program through a rigorous educational program to create a praise and love for art in their consumption and construction. Even when they were agreeing to school administrators (who were initially not interested and were now in the waiting list of three months), they were putting major single shows and retrospectives on the key, but representing Indian and South Asian artists, often showed them in prestigious international galleries and museums-Icein Mohammed showed them in the prestigious international galleries and museums.

Roobina Karode | Photo Credit: Etiquette The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

Regardless of the social capital collected by Knama in these 15 years, or perhaps due to the absence of a building – and thus the absence of a definition or mold in which function. “We wanted to build the collection, building the team, building the audience, all at the same time,” said crores. “We saw subjects, time, groups, movements. We saw the history of art because it was in and beyond this country. We were interested in our neighbors, shared history with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. So I think it became very important to understand and define this vision.”

Competition with mall, hugging technology

India’s art landscape is fruit -flowing, there is no doubt, with new fairs and artists working with biennials, galleries and diverse media, and art acquisition is being seen as a top passion property. And while the goal of a museum is not the same as any of these, there are constant worrying reports that show that footfalls in museums worldwide are declining, which has been closed.

“There is a lot that is dying for people’s attention,” said Aditi Jaitley, senior curator of the performance art. “We compete with the mall, with the phone in the hands of the people. It is the reality of the world; it is the challenge set for us. And this idea of ​​the museums is burnt as dusty places with long corridors and dull, where you are some long walls of the text and are ‘educated’ – it should be the same.” How, then, a 21st -century museum can be relevant and can be a flower of culture that it wants to be?

Aditi Jaitley | Photo Credit: Inni Singh and Team

According to Jaitley, the hug technique is an answer, especially taken with the installation of oil pipes at the National Museum of Qatar in Doha on a recent visit. “If I have a performance, I can do some projects on a screen, which is about a tool, with an incredible story that how it is made or how it learns to play it, and a person can touch and see a screen. Or a QR code can be used, or can choose the headphone and choose a two -minute listening to the artist of the artist or music. Is.”

Crores also find the emergence of theme-based museums-a division dedicated to the automobile from a museum to a museum. “Art and creativity is very elastic,” he said, when asked about delaying emerging styles of Indian arts such as digital, immersive and iPap. “Divergence is required and sometimes, there is also a need to be distracted.”

All the same, the main function of a museum, and the role of the curator remains the same. “I felt that there is a big backlog in our own country where we have not given enough recognition to our artists,” he said. “We have to write our history. We have to write about the journey of our artists. We have to bring it to the consciousness of the people, and we have to do hard work and hard work on it because it is an area that has not been known so well.”

In this background, the new KNMA will emerge with galleries for permanent collection, and a cultural center with two auditoriums, a large, a black box. “Our miniature collection now has more than 1,000 works, and we will have two shows of miniatures in the opening,” Nadar said. “But in fact, the work in hand is very large and more private venture is required. What Sunil Kant Munjal has started with seriousness in Goa is very big and we are ready for Brij. What they are doing is a little different. He does not have a very big art collection, but he is a very dedicated person. I think we will be an example.

The author is an independent journalist based in Mumbai, writing on culture, lifestyle and technology.