Walk past Jade and Dhaba, two of Delhi’s old-school fine dining favourites at The Claridges, and you have a gallery full of well-curated Indian art from the 1960s on display. Sunlight streams in from the one clear glass wall that faces the outside corner making the large space feel roomier. From Souza to Parekh, frames, big and small, are laid out as if each were its own show stopper.
This is the DAG’s newest space in Delhi. It opened on the last Sunday of September with The Sixties Show, the first in a series of exhibits that the gallery has planned for, in this 3,800 sq. ft. space they have acquired. The upcoming two shows will also be era-focused, with artists of the 1950s starting by the first week of December, followed by Indian art from the 1970s.
The move here has been long coming, says Ritu Vajpeyi Mohan, Publisher, DAG. “Hauz Khas Village [HKV, where the gallery was previously] was a buzzing location. It had brought in people who we thought would really be interested in art. But [the area] isn’t what it used to be anymore,” she says by way of explaining their move. The space in HKV will now be an administrative office only.
Two projects that opened in January this year, really set the tone for what seems to be the gallery’s very intentional expansion plans.
George Keyt’s work at The Sixties Show
First, the opening of Drishyakala Museum at the Red Fort barracks, which was billed as the first public-private museum in the country. The space was a result of a partnership with the DAG and Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and is spread over three floors, occupying 27,000 sq.ft, also housing an open library space stocked with various DAG and ASI publications.
Second, was their involvement in setting up a Banaras-themed art exhibit at the Deen Dayal Hastakala Sankul in Varanasi, in Uttar Pradesh on invitation by the Ministry of Textiles.
Currently, they are also working with the ASI to rehabilitate the Indian War Memorial Museum as well as the Mumtaz Mahal, one of the main palaces within the Fort complex, into the available barrack space. This involves digitising, curating and displaying the ASI’s collection of Mughal miniatures, jewellery, armour, and textiles.
While Ritu calls DAG’s providing of its museum services a “recurring expense”, she says this is part of a “two-pronged movement” for the gallery. Theirs is clearly a commercial enterprise, “but we are also most certainly more than just a gallery; we are also working on building the ecosystem,” she says.
Moving their primary gallery space to the “elite” Lutyens Delhi then, and inside the premises of a five-star hotel, might seem counter-intuitive to this purpose. But the idea, say the gallery’s representatives, is to have a bigger and better experience, which is centrally located, accessible and one that lets people have an “easier experience” — Hauz Khas Village has after all changed drastically from a designer-and-artist hub into college goers’ party central.
Krishen Khanna’s Drive
DAG will expand into the neighbouring expat- and diplomat-heavy Chanakyapuri by 2020, also opening at a corporate space in Okhla in the same year. “The Okhla space will have a gallery, archival rooms, and libraries. We want people to potter around, or even come in for research should they want to,” says Ritu. This last will be by permission.
Called the Delhi Art Gallery when it was set up in 1993, the DAG now seems to be on the path to becoming an art institution-cum-academy on its own. State museums and academies aside, this increasing participation of private players in setting the course for a broader narrative of Indian and South Asian art can only mean exciting times ahead.
DAG at The Claridges, 12, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road. The Sixties Show on till 23 November, 2019.
Published - October 14, 2019 12:07 pm IST
