Art Matters: My Art A-ha Moment!

About 6 years ago I had an 'A-ha' moment when it came to art. I was completing a course in Curatorial Studies at the Bhau Daji Lad Museum (must do!) and as part of the series, gallerist Mortimer Chatterjee was able to take us to the Tata Insitutute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai to view their collection.

If you are a student of Indian art history or have yourself visited the TIFR, you might know that it houses one of the most significant collections of modern Indian art anywhere in the world. Wherever you look you see rare works by India's greatest artists, Zarina Hashmi and Nasreen Mohamedi, and Souzas and Razas... oh my!

How and why an institution such as TIFR built this collection is a story worth reading in the book that Mort and his partner Tara Lal have put together on the collection, or if you are lucky, told by the writers themselves, but here's one quick fact: In the 1950s when Pandit Jawarharlal Nehru allotted a large piece of land in the city to build a science institution, Homi Bhabha, the director envisioned a space where art and science could come together, housing not only India's brightest scientific minds but also a museum like collection of work by new and established artists. 

Most significantly, 1% of the institute's annual budget was allocated to acquiring art.

Now when was the last time you heard something like that? And boy was that 1% put to good use by nurturing the careers of artists such as VS Gaitonde and MF Hussain. 

At a time when we continually lament the loss of interest in art and culture by our generation as a whole, what the TIFR story does for me is that it helps to remember that not so long ago as a country we believed that art has a place equal to all other endeavours and with this belief and the infrastructure to support it, our cultural ecosystem flourished. 

Art matters and investing in it also matters.

Shivani Sambhare is an independent arts writer and consultant who likes coffee, historical fiction and anything art deco. Follow her on Instagram at @the.artinsider.