PALACE ROAD: National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) Bengaluru, nestled in the premises of a restored heritage building, is all set to celebrate its sixth anniversary.
The museum gallery is organising a day-long event to mark the day. On the occasion, City Express spoke to officer on special duty and NGMA’s deputy curator Rehana Shah about the journey.
The beginnings
The Manikyavelu Mansion was once the property of the Mysore Maharajah. It was a crumbling building when, during S M Krishna’s government, it was decided to have NGMA operate from there.
Earlier, I was with NGMA in Delhi. When I came here in 2003, the building was in bad shape. With the help of the architect Venkataraman and the Central Public Works Department, it was ready by 2008. It was inaugurated the next year.
Art from Delhi
Once this was done, we didn’t have artworks. So we got 600 of the 17,000 pieces that were at the headquarters in Delhi.
Even now, we haven’t really acquired paintings of our own. People are ready to loan them to us, or we get them from Delhi or the Mumbai branch. We also have exhibitions.
Plans for extension
We’ve had the exhibition space extended: apart from the old gallery, the old and new wings of the mansion have been connected to create another gallery. We would like to extend the exhibition space some more, but that requires government funding, and so might take a while to materialise.
Events today
There’s no need to register and no age bar for today’s events; we want to have the maximum footfall possible.
We’ll start at 11 in the morning with a portraiture contest titled Portraits for Posterity: Make a Portrait of NGMA. Participants should bring their own art materials, and everyone who completes a portrait of NGMA will receive a participation certificate.
There will be an art quiz from 1 to 2 in the afternoon, six short films of 12 to 20 minutes each, on artists and their works. The selection: An Artistic Journey, K K Hebbar, Inner Eye, Amrita Sher-Gil and Future Canvas.
National Gallery of Modern Art, 49, Manikyavelu Mansion, Palace Road. For details, call 2234 2338