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3 Day Study and Cultural Tour to Delhi
3 Day Study and Cultural Tour to Delhi
Department of Visual Arts
18th September- 20th September 2017
The Visual Arts Department of The IIS University, Jaipur provides an environment in which the study and practices of art history, theory, and studio combine in a unique and dynamic way covering undergraduate, postgraduate programmes and Ph.D. in Art History, Applied Art, Painting, Sculpture & Print- Making. The department organized a 3 day study trip to Delhi from 18th September to 20th September 2017. Two teacher incharges escorted with with thirty one girl students from BVA Part II, III & IV. The study tour as per the curriculum was an exposure trip to the places of historical and architectural importance, museums, art institutions and gallery. The three days were the best learning and culture exchange experience for the students.
MONDAY 18TH September
Day 1: We started our tour on 18th (Monday) in morning from The IISU Campus at 6:00 am via bus with packed breakfast. We checked in United-21 Citymark, a 4star hotel of Gurgaon and had lunch there. We began our first day of study tour with Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhawan, Feroze Shah Road, New Delhi. There we visited the Akademi’s galleries to visualize the artworks including, installations, paintings and sculptures of various artists and looked for Akademi’s publications on art and artists in their publication section. Lalit Kala Akademi is a place that fuels creativity, ignites minds, and provides inspiration. Its extraordinary exhibitions and collection of modern and contemporary art are dedicated to helping you understand and enjoy the art of our time. Very close to it was Triveni Kala Sangam, 205 Tansen Marg, near Bengali Market. Triveni complex contains four art galleries, namely Shridharni Gallery, Art Heritage Gallery, Triveni Gallery and a basement gallery run by Art Heritage. The complex also houses Triveni Chamber Theatre, Triveni Garden Theatre (outdoor theatre), Triveni Sculpture Court - an open air sculpture gallery). Its rich collection and exhibited works enthused the art students of our department. Then we also covered AIFACS, All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society, 1, Rafi Marg that organises art exhibitions and makes awards to artists across the country. Among the most prominent artists exhibited in the 1940s were Amrita Sher-Gil, Sailoz Mookherjee and Manishi Dey. Many other followed in the long history of the AIFACS. Students got opportunity to see artist’s works displayed there and interact with them. In the evening we also covered Dhoomimal Gallery, Connaught Circus, Block G, Connaught Place, which is considered the oldest contemporary art gallery in New Delhi. As well as representing and regularly showcasing the artwork of well-known artists like Shri Jamini Roy, Laxman Pai and P.N. Choyal, the gallery continues to support and promote new emerging talents through scholarships and exhibitions. It hosts the collections of the best artists and its exhibitions are often commercially high profile. From there India Gate was on the way, which during nightfall, is dramatically floodlit while the fountains nearby make a lovely display with coloured lights. It commemorates the 70,000 Indian soldiers who lost their lives fighting for the British Army during the World War I. Around 9:00 pm we left for our hotel, had dinner and settled to our rooms.
TUESDAY 19TH September
Second day of our trip begun with breakfast at our Hotel and then full day visit to museums and art Galleries. By 10:00 we reached to our first destination, National Museum, Janpath, New Delhi. The Museum presently holds approximately 2,00,000 objects of a diverse nature, both Indian as well as foreign, and its holdings cover a time span of more than five thousand years of Indian cultural heritage. Museum provided a guide to our group that guided us about objects of Historical, Cultural and Artistic significance for the purpose to display, protection, preservation and interpretation (research) available in the Museum. He disseminated knowledge about the significance of the objects in respect of history, culture and artistic excellence and achievements. Many of the publications published by the National Museum are comparable to the best art books published anywhere in the world. Some of them have fetched the Presidential award for their quality of production. Many of the important books were purchased for our Visual Arts department from National Museum’s sale counter. Even we teachers and students bought lots of Museum’s publications and sculptures related to Indian Art and Culture for our department as well as personnel collection. After viewing the museum, we had packed food in our bus itself and from there we proceeded to NGMA, National Gallery of Modern Art, India Gate, Near Delhi High Court, where A Show of Manu Parekh 60 years of selected works was on display from 26 August- 24 September, 2017. NGMA is one of India's major art galleries, once remained the residence of the Maharaja of the Jaipur, one of the best places to explore Indian contemporary art. It houses a splendid collection of paintings, some of which are as old as 150 years that aimed to acquire and preserve works of art from 1857 onwards. An excellent collection of works by both Indian and colonial artists dating from 1850 is displayed. The art collection of the NGMA is vast and eclectic. The 17,000 works within it testify to a rich and resplendent past even as they pay tribute to the present. Its treasures span miniature paintings to modernist interventions and au courant contemporary expressions. The NGMA’s accent was always on acquisition of paintings, sculptures, graphics and later photographs. Not only was attention paid in acquiring the old masters like Raja Ravi Varma, Abanindranath Tagore, as well as modernists like Amrita Sher-Gil and Rabindranath Tagore, et al, but also the focus on important contemporary art was a prime concern. Thus the NGMA purchased M F Husain’s landmark 1955 work Zameen where the artist’s use of icons and symbols were articulated in a monumental sweep. Similarly, Husain’s Farmer’s Family, where ordinary people were endowed with tremendous dignity and iconic quality, became a valuable addition to the collection. Another landmark painting, Tyeb Mehta’s Santiniketan Triptych, where the brilliant fields of colour hold together an array of convulsed figures, entered the NGMA collection in the 90s. The whole collection process not only looked at art practices in different art centres like Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Baroda and Santiniketan but also took note of the important art activity in Delhi Thus NGMA acquired Bhabesh Sanyal, Sailoz Mukherjee, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, J Swaminathan, Manjit Bawa, Anjolie Ela Menon, Paramjit Singh, Arpita Singh among others. Works of art for the NGMA were obtained through purchase, permanent loans and gifts. One of the most generous and most valuable gifts was a large body of bold, vibrant, painterly works by Amrita Sher-Gil. It came from her father Sardar Umrao Singh and her brother-in-law KCK Sundaram. Sher-Gil’s husband Dr Victor Egan, however, sold some 44 paintings to NGMA. Together, the Amrita Sher-Gil corpus became one of the treasures of NGMA. The paintings came to NGMA between 1949 and 1950. All this is studied by students of Visual arts in their course. And viewing those visuals which they used to see on projectors and documentary films in original was a great experience for our students. After a long day in museums, students were given one hour free time to explore the Janpath Market situated near Connaught Place in central New Delhi for shopping on their own. In fact Janpath is one of the most magnificent street shopping destinations in India! Then finishing up with whole lot of shopping bags and discussions about that shopping in bus, we reached to our hotel, had food and went to our rooms to settle down.
WEDNESDAY 20TH September
It was the third day of our trip and thus we did checkout and finishing up with our breakfast moved to IGNCA, The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Janpath. It is a centre encompassing the fields of creative and critical literature, written and oral; the visual arts, ranging from architecture, sculpture, painting and graphics to general material culture, photography and film; the performing arts of music, dance and theatre in their broadest connotation; and all else in fairs, festivals and lifestyle that has an artistic dimension. We were given a warm welcome by IGNCA members and Mr. Anil Dwivedi, project officer of Conservation laboratory of IGNCA guided students about art restoration and allowed them to see the whole conservation process in laboratory. A film about how and with what objectives IGNCA work in the field of Art & Culture was shown to the children. A concerned team of their film division interacted with our students and allowed them to see the working or functioning of India’s oldest camera. The centre had displayed exhibition on traditional forms of theatre as brought out through shadow puppets Chhaya putul and masks. Another display is part of the rare collection that IGNCA that acquire from private collectors almost three decades ago at a huge price, but was lying unused in its repository since then. Archivist Himani Pande, who has put together the display, says Deen Dayal’s contribution to the field of Indian photography is remarkable. It is dedicated to the life and works of Raja Deen Dayal, the legendary 19th-century photographer, who set up studios in Hyderabad and Bombay. In the adjoining room, studio furniture and equipment transport one to Deen Dayal’s workplace. The centrepiece is a vintage Belgian life-sized mirror — an original from his personal collection — which was used by many a royalty for a final touch-up before posing for photographs.