NGMA denies Palekar's allegation that its advisory panel for Mumbai, Bengaluru scrapped

The National Gallery of Modern Art on Sunday denied Amol Palekar's allegation that the advisory panel of the gallery's Mumbai and Bengaluru centres have been scrapped, as a controversy erupted over the veteran actor's speech at a Mumbai event being repeatedly interrupted by some NGMA members.

A video available on social media purportedly showed Palekar criticising the Ministry of Culture at the opening of an exhibition in memory of artist Prabhakar Barwe on February 8 for reportedly scrapping the advisory committees at the gallery's Mumbai and Bengaluru centres.

The veteran actor-director on Sunday said he was only trying to seek reasons behind the cancellation of retrospectives of two senior artists.

However later, NGMA's Director General Adwaita Gadanayak said, "Regarding recent reports in media pertaining to NGMA Mumbai, it is clarified as under - The Advisory Committees of NGMA Mumbai, Bangaluru and Delhi have not been dissolved. Their terms have ended recently and they are in the process of being reconstituted."
At this point, an NGMA member on the stage interrupted, saying that Palekar should talk about the event. To this, Palekar responded, "I am going to talk about the same. Are you you applying censorship to that?"
Palekar was again interrupted by a woman, who said, "This is not needed at the moment, sorry... The function is about Prabhakar Barwe, please stick to that."
However, he refused to stop, and went on to mention that writer Nayantara Sahgal was invited to speak at the Marathi literary convention recently but at the last minute the invitation was withdrawn because what she was going to say "was slightly critical of the situation around us. Are we creating the same situation here?"