The Renzo Piano Building Workshop-designed New Wing of the Chicago Art Institute just opened in May, to house contemporary art. We’ve all heard about that. We know — from images, if we haven’t seen it — that it’s spectacular, and buzzing with hives of visitors. But, contrary to popular understanding, contemporary art isn’t the only recipient of a new home. There is an exception — the New Alsdorf Galleries of Indian, South-east Asian, Himalayan and Islamic Art were entirely recreated as well. Few people know that these are the largest galleries by square feet housing South and South-east Asian art, including Indian art, in the United States.
Creating these galleries wasn’t an exercise in carving out a space to show Asian art. Alsdorf Associate Curator Madhuvanti Ghose spent almost two years with Renzo Piano and his team to develop galleries that reflected the art they would finally house. “We worked as a team,” Madhuvanti explains, “But I didn’t want to do the same old thing — I wanted to find a contemporary way to show traditional art.” The challenge was magnified by the cutting-edge Western art next door — a few strides away — in the New Wing. How could work from across the centuries be displayed in a contemporary manner without seeming to be out of place?
The site itself offered some solutions. It is elongated and hall-like. One side is walled. The other side was partially opened out as part of the new plan, brightening the entire space. Yet, the light had to be limited, because too much of it could damage some of the fragile materials. The window framed a part of the modern Chicago skyline, creating a sort of counterpoint to the hall, without being imposing. Unlike many museum spaces with gray walls, this one derives from a palette that Indians now claim as their own. The walls remain white, but some of the sculptural works are on elevated platforms, and rest against slabs of eye-popping colour, a textured haldi-yellow — not flat yellow, but with darker yellow streaks. Similarly, a red that rests between brick and crimson. Against these, the sculpture leaps out at the viewer, who is in turn drawn to the space.
Predicting this, the floor has been laid out to encourage meandering through the works, allowing the experience of seeing priceless works in close proximity, sometimes — as in the case of large statues — in comparison with the self. The gallery’s geographical polarities are bracketed by the Chinese Buddha at the entrance and the South Indian one at the end. In between, 435 pieces, predominantly from the Indian subcontinent but also from Thailand, Indonesia, Laos and Vietnam, stand displayed.
It seems to have worked — visitors have walked though the maze, stopping at whatever catches their fancy. Unfortunately, much to Madhuvanti’s despair, very few of them are Indian, despite the fact that Chicago has one of the largest concentrations of Indians in the United States. Just a few feet away is the site where Vivekanand made his famous speech. Indians often amble onto the premises, looking for the spot. The stage no longer exists, but none of that deters the tourists. Few of them move on to the gallery.
But this is a country where families use the arts to help their children keep a link with India alive. The India of the American NRI is often a land of memory and fantasy, nourished by Bollywood, festivals and rituals, the news media and quick bytes of reality grabbed on visits back home. The Alsdorf galleries offer NRIs a rare opportunity to assess other strands of their Indian-ness, which is in some ways more than what Indians get back home.
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Our National Museum is callous and careless about its invaluable collection, and rarely do we see a display that feeds the mind and the senses. If anything, a visit to most of our museums leaves us thinking about how to improve them. That’s why so many of us try to grab the time to see ancient and medieval Indian art when we are abroad. We know it’s hard to get it back home.
The irony is, the NRIs seem not to value their own luck. Otherwise there wouldn’t be talk of so few of them spending time in this Chicago gallery.