A ‘museum curator’ is a term one hears often today. But how does it really feel to understand art, read it, view it through different perspectives and select the best for an exhibition?
On the occasion of International Museum Day 2023, The Activity Club of Victoria Memorial Hall took an initiative and hosted a workshop called Curators of Tomorrow for students of classes IX to XII. The workshop ran between May 13 and 18, where participants donned the hats of curators and put together the exhibition titled Time Locked: The Changing Shades of Rural India at the Calcutta Gallery of Victoria Memorial Hall.
Paula Sengupta inaugurates the exhibition at Victoria Memorial Hall on Thursday
Paula Sengupta, head of department, graphics- printmaking, Rabindra Bharati University inaugurated the exhibition on May 18.
Speaking about the initiative, Sagnik Bhattacharya, coordinator of the Activity Club, said: “The key mentor was Sujaan Mukherjee, former education outreach officer of DAG Museums. The workshop was mostly facilitated by him and me. The steps involved were discussing a painting — perspective, realism, and gaze; understanding different kinds of painting, their purpose and schools; curatorial strategies; selection of paintings; storytelling through paintings; curatorial notes. Museums for this age group were something to be in awe of, almost intimidating. So we tried to break that idea. As Victoria Memorial is a symbol of the city of Kolkata, so as citizens, they have some right in engaging with the museum more meaningfully.”
The students at the workshop
Fourteen students from various city schools such as Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School, La Martiniere School for Girls, Shri Shikshayatan School, Calcutta Girls High School and more took part in the workshop.
The students understood how to read paintings and curated their own gallery with a dozen paintings from the rich reserve of artworks of the Victoria Memorial Hall.
Talking about her experience, Adrita Mitra, a Class XI student from Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School, said: “Usually workshops talk about art and we draw and paint but this workshop is new. We are setting up a whole exhibition. It’s not something that’s done quite often. My biggest learning was in the future, if I ever have an exhibition of my own, I know what to do behind the scenes.”
A student discusses the nuances of a painting with Paula Sengupta
The exhibition curated by the young minds called Time Locked: The Changing Shades of Rural India is currently on at the gallery and is open to the public. It follows a narrative of landscapes, human, man-nature interaction, animals and more in the ruralscape through a 24-hour timeline.
Sharanya Banerjee, studying in Class IX from Calcutta Girls High School, said: “I am into abstract art and sculptures and wanted to see what goes on in the process of making an exhibition. We selected a theme and on the basis of that day to night or night to day we positioned the artworks. How people spend their day doing different chores is what the idea was.”
Two of the dozen paintings the students chose for the exhibition from the rich reserve of artworks of the Victoria Memorial Hall
One can find artworks of famous artists such as The Landscape by Jamini Roy, The Owl by John Flemming, Currah (Kara) near Allahabad by Thomas Daniell, Landscape by Debiprasad Roychowdhury, Fairground by Gopal Ghosh to name a few.
All these paintings fell into the dawn to dusk timeline chosen by the curators. The range of artworks spanned from oil on canvas to watercolour and more. Souparno Gupta, who studies in Class X at St Lawrence High School commented, “It was partly because of my interest in history and the art and Culture of India that I took part. We learnt important aspects of curation, cataloguing images, teamwork and more.”
The activity was intended to bridge the gap between the Victoria Memorial Hall as a symbol of authority to make it a co-owned space, especially for the young minds. It aims to make viewers understand art and not just view it.
Activities such as these involve students and give them exposure to consider art as a career option as well. Rudrani Addya from Class XII, Shri Shikshayatan School shared, “After XII, I want to pursue a profession in museums and here we were learning the job of a curator of a museum. So, for that reason I was intrigued to take part in the workshop.”
Paula Sengupta, chief guest to the exhibition also commended the initiative. In her words, “I’m really excited to see that museums are inviting young audience to engage with their collection not just from the point of view of interested viewers but from the point of view of looking at them seriously enough to enter a curatorial process that requires engagement at an intellectual level, investigating history, looking into the narratives that form these works of art, interpret it in relation to other works of art and put together a cohesive exhibition.”