Ebrahim Alkazi, who expanded the vocabulary and visuals of theatre, also had a keen eye for images old and new. His vision for preserving the old can be seen in his carefully-maintained archive of some of the earliest photographs of India, now curated by his grandson Rahaab Allana. Along with his wife Roshen, Alkazi also supported modernist women artists. Among them was Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese pop art pioneer who did to polka dots what Pablo Neruda saw spring doing to the cherry trees. The Center for International Contemporary Arts, which Alkazi founded in New York, revived Kusama’s career in 1989 with a solo show that thrust her unapologetic art and self into the global imagination. Her recent passing reminds us that, in the world of art, it takes one to know one.
