By Reya Mehrotra
Simplicity is an extraordinary trait in Bhuri Bai’s work. The artist, who is from the Bhil Adivasi neighborhood, paints traditions and murals in earthy and key colours, with a particular ‘Bhilness’ to her method. Her imagination draws inspiration from her roots—her village (Jhabua in Madhya Pradesh) and its flora and fauna—and replicates itself on canvases ranging from walls to paper. It was her art that helped Bai safe a prominent spot in an otherwise male-dominated neighborhood, producing hers a story of strength and courage.
Not surprisingly, when a 1-of-a-sort Indian art initiative was to premier, it chose to start with her work. It’s not just the inclusion of Bai’s art, nonetheless, that tends to make Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) stand out. South India’s initially significant private art museum, MAP aims to supply viewers each a physical and virtual knowledge.
Launched digitally (www.map-india.org) on December 5, MAP challenges the conventional notion of a museum by providing a virtual interactive knowledge to viewers. The parallel physical knowledge is underway too—in a 5-storey facility on Bengaluru’s Kasturba Road, with art galleries, an auditorium, education centre, art and analysis library, cafe, as properly as a conservation and specialised analysis facility. The space is slated to open some time subsequent year.
Launched at a time when ‘digital’ is the word of the hour, the museum will continue to exist each digitally and physically post the pandemic, as well, says Kamini Sawhney, director, MAP. “We see the digital and the physical museums as two parts of a whole… the former will remain post the pandemic and will act as a parallel programming space for MAP to reach out to audiences all over the world. Digitally, wider audiences—geographically and linguistically—can be reached since content can be made more easily accessible in multiple languages,” Sawhney adds.
MAP is not the initially museum, nonetheless, to go digital. Because of the pandemic, several have shifted on the web. In March, as the planet was locked in, Google teamed up with more than 2,000 museums about the planet to give folks free of charge virtual tours of the spaces via its Google Arts & Culture app. In November, the corporation Digital Jalebi—which styles interactive installations and computer software for museums, exhibitions and planetariums—created a initially-of-its-sort Digitalised Heritage Museum and Knowledge Centre in Kolkata for folks to get a true-life really feel and glimpse of Sister Nivedita’s life.
This visible digital shift prompted them to conceive MAP with an on the web version, as well, says Sawhney. “We began looking at how we could engage with our online communities. From interactive digital engagement pieces to taking our Art & Culture lecture series online and enhancing our website to feature more content, we experimented to understand our audiences better,” she says of MAP, the brainchild of MAP Foundation, which was established in 2011 and has founding patrons, like Tata Trusts, Wipro Foundation, Infosys Foundation, Manipal Foundation, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, amongst other people.
Besides Bai, MAP’s opening exhibition also integrated the performs of Suresh Punjabi—monochrome photographs of folks in Madhya Pradesh’s Nagda town, captured amongst 1979 and 1990. A farmer, clad in a white shirt and turban, stares into the lens, as he poses wide-eyed. The exhibition compares Punjabi’s captures with that of his contemporaries in other components of the planet to bring out the evolution of studio photography. Another masterpiece integrated in the exhibition is Tallur LN’s video work known as Interference, which captures the cleaning of a two-century-old carpet that when belonged to Muhammad Mahabat Khan III, the final ruling nawab of the princely state of Junagadh. These exquisite exhibits are element of MAP’s expanding collection of 18,000 artworks, from the 10th century to present day, covering categories as varied as photography, folk & tribal art, craft & design and style, pre-contemporary art, contemporary & modern and well known culture & textiles. Accenture Labs, via its Tech4Good initiative, has also combined technologies such as AI with human-centered design and style to build the country’s initially conversational digital persona to support guests have a more engaging knowledge at MAP.
The digital museum will also supply curated on the web exhibitions and accompanying programming components such as panel discussions, workshops for kids, masterclasses for adults, and so on. There will be articles, blogs and brief content as properly for folks to access. Since the collection is progressively getting digitised, a new set of artworks will be produced accessible for researchers, students and art patrons just about every month. “Our online talks and events programme will continue to run, while our archive of past events and lectures will be available for people to listen to and watch. In the first quarter of the next year, we hope to open the MAP museum store online, which will have a selection of curated and well-designed items,” says Sawhney.
One wonders, nonetheless, if going digital eliminates the need to have for a physical space. “A digital platform has a bigger reach than a physical one and saves cost as well.. so why would one spend on physical spaces when it can be digital? In the coming years, there will be a permanent digital reset,” believes Sravanth Aluru, founder and CEO of Bengaluru-primarily based corporation Avataar.Me, which empowers digital marketing and advertising and commerce experiences working with AR. “Even before Covid, digital walk-ins were complimenting physical ones and experiences were being brought in 3D formats in living rooms,” he adds.
Sawhney, nonetheless, says a digital museum may well not necessarily imply fewer charges. “It might be more true to say that it incurs different costs as compared to a physical building. We allocate budgets towards server space, technology, video content, etc,” she explains.
Speaking HEADS
With a digital museum, content can be produced more conveniently accessible in a number of languages
— Kamini Sawhney, director, Museum of Art and Photography
A digital platform has a larger attain than a physical 1 and saves charges as properly
— Sravanth Aluru, founder & CEO, Avataar.Me, a Bengaluru-primarily based 3D AI corporation
Some museums that went digital in 2020
British Museum, London
Musee d’Orsay, Paris
Museum of Art, Sao Paulo
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, Manhattan
National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico