Two museums and a visitor

THE best new year gift you could give to yourself is to keep company with Bhupen Khakhar,

J Swaminathan and KG Subramanyan. The absolutely fantastic part is you don’t have to share them with anyone. A Ramachandran loiters somewhere in the back. The brilliant Nalini Malani is immersed in her own world, so you don’t have to wonder about an invasion of privacy — watch where she’s hung, take a step back, gaze at her from all angles, including from the back.

You’ll find that all the oils on canvas are stuck on a piece of cardboard hung with twine on the wall. You feel the temptation slithering across the back of your spine, of wanting to do what you shouldn’t but you know you can. You must push it away.

It's time to move on to the next modern master in the next gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts at Panjab University in Chandigarh. “How to steal a painting and get away with it” could easily be the subject of this column — except not. It’s all too precious. Also, perhaps, there’s something charming in the fact that most of the world has forgotten that these works even exist — they are certainly on no website — so when you come upon them in this serendipitous way, the thought crosses your mind. Yes, this could be your very own, private space where on special occasions like the new year you could break open a samosa or two. After all, Bhupen Khakhar’s work that’s hanging on the front wall is called ‘Breakfast in Kasauli’. Foodies would certainly applaud.

There’s more. This building was designed by BP Mathur, an architect who worked with Pierre Jeanneret, the main architect-planner of the university. The collection of contemporary masters in the museum, about 1,200 artworks, was curated by none other than Chandigarh’s beloved son and internationally acclaimed art historian, BN Goswamy, who wrote a much-read column for The Tribune until he passed away a year ago. Moreover, I am now a card-carrying member of the City Beautiful. I realise I am in the presence of both History and Culture, both H & C capitalised.

Kulwinder strides in. His angry movements disturb the cold air of the gallery — so far it’s been just me and the masters. Ramachandran’s brooding painting of monks in a church seems like it’s part of the Andrei Rublyev school. The attendant, who prefers warming her hands on the heater in the reception area, tells me, “Bahut log aate hain museum main”, at least 10-12 every day. I ask Kulwinder if there is a guide. I don’t know, he replies sternly, “main technical se hoon”.

If Chandigarh is what Delhi was 40 years ago, then you can well imagine its museums — hidden jewels encrusted by sarkari indifference. The Government Museum and Art Gallery in Sector 10, designed by Le Corbusier himself, has that gorgeous wooden door that turns on a single pivot — you also see this large door in the conjoined Haryana-Punjab Legislative Assembly space that Corbu designed at one end of the Capitol Complex, itself a magnificent plaza that should have been teeming with happy people and moongphali-wallahs in the winter but has, instead, been turned into an exclusive zone in the name of security, which means only VVIPs and registered visitors have access — but the real experience begins when you go through the Corbu door into the Government Museum.

The only available brochures are in French. (Corbusier was Swiss-French, so those folks come, it seems.) The English ones “are finished”. The guide — her name is Geetanjali — walks up the ramp with me. On one wall hangs a gorgeous rope installation by Mrinal Mukherjee, except the bottom is frayed. You reach the first floor and are immediately stunned by the bronzes, the Sanghol excavations, the Gandhara sculptures and the Pahari paintings in the rooms beyond. Seems MS Randhawa, widely acknowledged as Chandigarh’s First Citizen, scoured the estates of the small princelings soon after Independence and requested them to part with their treasures so they could become the heart of the Art Museum. And that’s how BNG — as all of North India lovingly called BN Goswamy — revolutionised our understanding of our own heritage.

Everyone, of course, knows that the Gandhara sculptures were divided between India and Pakistan when the country was split in 1947 — the Lahore Museum kept 60 per cent, while Corbu’s Chandigarh Museum housed the remaining. And so, gently smiling Buddhas, a rock surface with His footprint, a standing stele carved with scenes from the Buddha’s childhood when He was still Siddhartha and his mother Maya had a dream about her very special son — all found a perch here. The sculptures reminded me of the museum in Taxila across the border, not so far away as the crow flies.

The galleries are empty. The attendants are reading the newspaper. Geetanjali the guide tells me that “many people come”, including students (a school group is shouting with riotous laughter outside) and foreigners. Data from January-September 2024 says 27,839 tickets were sold. Compare that with galleries anywhere abroad. The Louvre in Paris attracts nine million visitors annually, the Metropolitan Museum in New York seven million and the Hermitage in St Petersburg 3.2 million. (No Indian museum features in the top 100 most-visited art museums in the world.)

The Chandigarh Museum hasn’t had a full-time Director in years; the gentleman currently in charge is a sub-divisional magistrate, who was on leave when I visited because he was getting married. (Nothing wrong with that, I guess.) (He’s back.) So when Geetanjali tells me that Alexander the Great showed up in Gandhara via the sea, I know it’s time to leave.

It’s also time to go to Elante Mall, to check out what really rocks Chandigarh — clearly, the opposite of dead and boring spaces like museums. Perhaps UT Home Secretary Mandeep Brar, who is on a mission these days to improve the tourist profile of his City Beautiful, should get the Elante people on board. They are sure to know the answer to the question: How to get people back into museums and art galleries to imbibe some H&C?

Open up the city. Get rid of its mai-baap culture. Stop discriminating in the name of security. Make the city more equitable. Return to the idea of Chandigarh, the idea of a “smart city” far ahead of its time.

This year, listen to the voices of people, just like we do at The Tribune. Happy 2025, folks!