MAP, the Museum of Artwork and Pictures Bangalore opens

The Museum of Artwork and Pictures (MAP) wasn’t born as a museum – a minimum of, not within the flesh. Conceived by philanthropist and collector Abhishek Poddar in 2020 as India’s first online-only artwork and images gallery, it successfully upended the everyday ‘physical-first, digital-next’ museum rulebook by assuming a bricks-and-mortar avatar earlier this month, three years after its digital launch. Located within the coronary heart of Bangalore, on the crossroads of Vidhana Soudha (the state capitol), The Excessive Court docket, and the Authorities Museum, MAP – which formally opened its doorways on 18 February 2023 – goals to protect India’s wealthy creative legacy by democratising artwork and tradition, and making it accessible to numerous audiences. The museum is led by director Kamini Sawhney. 

Museum of Artwork and Pictures (MAP) in Bangalore

The constructing, designed by main Indian architects Soumitro Ghosh and Nisha Mathew of Bangalore-based multidisciplinary observe Mathew & Ghosh, is unfold throughout 5 storeys and 4,089 sq m. It performs host to 5 galleries, a 130-seat auditorium, a museum store, an artwork and analysis library, a specialised analysis and conservation facility, an training centre, and a still-in-the-works rooftop restaurant. 

For Ghosh and Mathew, the first objective was guaranteeing an architectural blueprint strong sufficient to guard the artworks on show, but discreet sufficient to afford them pleasure of place. By the identical token, the principle galleries are cocooned in opaque enclosures that defend the artworks from publicity to ultraviolet mild, whereas additionally guaranteeing temperature and humidity management. On the identical time, the circulation areas are enveloped in glass, making nature an in depth neighbour and mitigating museum fatigue (a choice of panes characteristic a dichroic end that tasks a shimmering, colour-shifting impact in relation to the altering mild and the place of the observer). The expertise culminates in a terrace that provides unhindered vistas of town, in addition to the neighbouring 300-acre Cubbon Park, one of many metropolis’s historic hallmarks. 

From the surface, the constructing is harking back to a post-industrial water tank, a metaphor for the capability of artwork to quench the thirst for knowledge, to galvanise society and tradition, and to replicate and evolve. The chrome steel façade is emblazoned with industrially pressed matte-finished panels that kind a container-like pores and skin over the construction, holding a mirror to the tanks of Bangalore’s bygone colonial period. The constructing additionally widens because it strikes upwards, an architectural intervention that optimises the construction, permitting the galleries above to really feel extra beneficiant, and seem virtually column-free. As well as, MAP is poised to be probably the most inclusive museum in India, with particular integrations for individuals with disabilities. 

In a departure from typical categorisation, MAP’s assortment of over 60,000 works (of which about 500 are at the moment housed within the museum), blurs the road between perceived excessive artwork and extra quotidian types of creativity. In the identical vein, fashionable and modern work, sculptures and graphics sit on the identical aircraft as artisanal textiles, indigenous artwork, and memorabilia of India’s world-renowned movie trade. 

The collections, broadly talking, span pre-modern artwork, textiles, craft and design, residing traditions, printing and promoting, images, and fashionable and modern artwork. Of explicit word is the images assortment, which is likely one of the most numerous in India, with artists and oeuvres starting from the mid-Nineteenth century proper as much as the current day. In a mirrored image of its inclusive ethos, many artworks are additionally accompanied by tactile responses, which patrons can contact and really feel as a visible different.

As a part of its inaugural line-up, MAP unveiled 4 never-before-seen exhibitions, every on view for a restricted interval. ‘VISIBLE/INVISIBLE’, curated by Sawhney, is a groundbreaking showcase that examines the incongruity between the position of girls in Indian artwork historical past and their relative subservience in fashionable public area. Equally attention-worthy is ‘Jyoti Bhatt: Time & Time Once more’, a present of over 160 pictures, in addition to contact sheets and archival supplies, of the eponymous Indian modernist printmaker, painter and photographer. The present is curated by Nathaniel Gaskell, director of MAP Academy, a web-based useful resource that provides digital programs and entry to MAP’s unique encyclopedia of artwork historical past from the area. 

On the bottom ground, Chirag-e-AI, a brand new sequence by modern artist LN Tallur, reinterprets sculpture and lamps in MAP’s assortment to discover the overlap between synthetic intelligence and ritualistic perception techniques. Tallur’s works, which query humanity’s rising reliance on know-how, minimize a pointy distinction to these in MAP’s Sculpture Courtyard, the place an set up by British sculptor Stephen Cox, titled Dialogues in Stone, incarnates mythological goddesses and sages in minimalist basalt varieties. Moreover, specifically commissioned items by Israeli artist and designer Arik Levy, and famous Indian modern artists, Ayesha Singh and Tarik Currimbhoy, seem in key areas all through the museum.  

The museum lies on the intersection of artwork and know-how, with digital integrations underpinning the reveals on show. Within the welcome atrium, for instance, flickering digital lamps, lit through QR codes, pay homage to the Indian custom of inserting a lamp close to the doorway. Likewise, MAP’s not too long ago launched digital persona of the late artist MF Husain – conceived in collaboration with Accenture – lets guests work together with the artist in actual time. Applied sciences akin to photogrammetry for 3D-scanning of artefacts, holograms, interactive projections, interactive contact partitions, sensor-based digital artwork views, and AI-enabled artwork and sample searches, are among the many instruments accessible to deliver every exhibit to life and provides every customer a deeply personalised expertise.  

For Poddar and Sawhney, the hope is for the Museum of Artwork and Pictures to make an impression on the subsequent technology. ‘Greater than half our inhabitants is beneath 25 years previous; no nation has extra younger individuals. I consider they’re those, the technology of change, who will finally be the true curators of MAP,’ says Poddar. 

As a beacon of artwork and tradition within the Indian subcontinent, MAP guarantees to place forgotten artwork and artists again on the map, and blaze a brand new path for Indian creativity internationally.

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