Content, context and chaos
A new event – a range of installations by six Delhi-based artists and a guest curator, also Delhi-based – opened the other day at the Panjab University’s Museum of Fine Arts. Much has been sought to be made of it, but I have a problem with the event. And I wish to state it, even if it strikes a note of discord in the midst of the usual chorus of congratulations and self-congratulation that one hears on occasions such as this.
One had been hearing for a long time that the galleries of the museum were going to be ‘re-arranged’, the task of displaying this distinguished collection of contemporary art having been contracted out to an expert from outside. Knowing as one does the need for fresh energies to flow through the museum, one was looking forward to seeing the result. But nothing of the kind has happened. All that one sees, instead, is a series of installations by seven different artists, most of them using for their own ends a large number of works from the permanent collection of the museum. So, one should be clear that it is a different show which will wind up in another few weeks, leaving the galleries exactly perhaps as they were before.
Let me state that I have no problem with installation as an art form. Naturally, not everything succeeds; but, among the large number that I have had occasion to see, both here and abroad, I have found many to be witty, others visually stimulating, still others thought-provoking. Let me also say that I hold some of the artists involved in the present event in great personal esteem, and have enjoyed seeing their work on view, although not everything in the same measure. But it is not as a ‘viewer’ that I speak here. My problem concerns the graver matter of museum practice, and it is as a museum person – at least a former museum person – that I have reservations about this event/exhibition. But let me spell them out.
If all the galleries of the museum had been temporarily vacated for any installations to be set up in them, there would be no issue in my mind. I might even have put up with the idea of some smart, all-knowing expert from outside being invited to give the poor provincials of Chandigarh a lesson in how to display works. But there is little that anyone is likely to learn from the present commotion. The processes that have gone into the making of the event are, on the other hand, startlingly different, disturbing.
Judging from what one sees in the galleries, the invited artists and the guest-curator seem to have been given the free run of the collection of the museum, allowing everyone to pick and choose any work/s for building their own installations with, or around. The result? A free-for-all approach in which remarkably little respect has been shown to so many works. They can be seen stacked together, crammed into spaces, displayed one in front of another, used as surfaces to which other objects are attached, laid flat on the ground or on their sides, almost at will. As if they were not original works of art, gathered over years with much effort, and worth serious sums of money today, but nameless building blocks.
How, one is entitled to wonder, was this allowed to happen? And what, if any, were the terms of reference of the guest curator? Admittedly, the objects belonging to the museum look different now, and some of the arrangements have a certain charm, or make thoughtful points. Contexts have clearly been changed, and content affected. But at what cost, or possible hazard?
Does all this ‘re-arranging’, however ephemeral, enhance the museum’s own works in any way, help them to be seen in a better light; or does it, somehow, trivialize them? Are all the drilled holes and arbitrary new fixtures – brought in against the established policy of the museum - going to stand there on scarred walls, and become a part of its new display? Again, is this fair to the artists whose works have been pulled out and treated with such casualness? Is there not an implicit context of showing or keeping the works when an artist sells or gives his work to the museum in the first instance? In any case, is this any way to treat works that are not your own and you have only been given courteous, temporary, access to? When I visited the museum on the day of the opening, one could feel a light sense of chaos in the air. And, within the context of museum practice, I wondered who was over-seeing and taking responsibility for the handling of the objects – all a part of university and, thus, public property – taken out from the collection?
These questions might appear to be too many, and somewhat inconvenient. But I doubt if they can be easily answered. That is why I have a problem. But, before I end, yet another question: which other museum in the country – a museum, not an art gallery – would have thrown its whole collection open in this manner, and allowed it to be turned on its head? I am all for art as play, but this? I have my reservations.
