What’s the Hullaballoo about the Venkatappa Art Gallery in Bangalore?
The fast growing city of Bangalore has a whole lot of problems; the roads (or lack off), the chaotic and undermanaged development of the city, the poor sanitation, dying lakes (and dying fish- another story) and in the last few weeks, even the weather; the one truly attractive character of Bangalore has turned ugly with the city sweltering with temperatures of 37 degree centigrade!
But something else has also been raising hackles in the city in the last few weeks. A little known and extremely run down government gallery in Bangalore, the Venkatappa Art Gallery (VAG from now on) has been thrown in to the spotlight by the announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) …show more content…
Opponents' believe that the government is abandoning cultural support under the pretext of financial restructuring and, that once 'privatized' and ruled by capital, the gallery might become unable to sustain activities that don't yield profit, such as research and conservation of cultural assets. Instead, they might be focussing on crowd-pulling exhibitions only. In London, the ‘privatization’ of the National Museum in 2015 has caused large scale strikes by museum …show more content…
Unfortunately, it is a very tough situation. On one hand, the Government needs to be able to encourage and facilitate the artist community and on the other hand, its funds are limited/ managed badly and it barely has the capacity to manage programs effectively or to scale up. When India gained Independence, the nation-state acknowledged the importance of culture in building a new India and the expressed the need for state support for arts and culture. Unfortunately, the actual budgets associated with arts and culture are miniscule and impossible to sustain long term management of cultural resources across the country. Additionally, funding to the arts still remains extremely unequitable and subjective. Whether we like it or not, privatization is one of the main engines for change in this century. In Europe and America, it affects all levels of government including culture. In general, privatization is considered a guarantor of increased efficiency. While this is true for goods in general- an efficiency driven society will produce more goods at more affordable rates for more people- it isn’t necessarily true for all types of goods, especially those produced by social, educational and cultural sectors. These areas require a more sophisticated trade-off between efficiency and equity, especially in the view of long term benefits for
The fast growing city of Bangalore has a whole lot of problems; the roads (or lack off), the chaotic and undermanaged development of the city, the poor sanitation, dying lakes (and dying fish- another story) and in the last few weeks, even the weather; the one truly attractive character of Bangalore has turned ugly with the city sweltering with temperatures of 37 degree centigrade!
But something else has also been raising hackles in the city in the last few weeks. A little known and extremely run down government gallery in Bangalore, the Venkatappa Art Gallery (VAG from now on) has been thrown in to the spotlight by the announcement of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) …show more content…
Opponents' believe that the government is abandoning cultural support under the pretext of financial restructuring and, that once 'privatized' and ruled by capital, the gallery might become unable to sustain activities that don't yield profit, such as research and conservation of cultural assets. Instead, they might be focussing on crowd-pulling exhibitions only. In London, the ‘privatization’ of the National Museum in 2015 has caused large scale strikes by museum …show more content…
Unfortunately, it is a very tough situation. On one hand, the Government needs to be able to encourage and facilitate the artist community and on the other hand, its funds are limited/ managed badly and it barely has the capacity to manage programs effectively or to scale up. When India gained Independence, the nation-state acknowledged the importance of culture in building a new India and the expressed the need for state support for arts and culture. Unfortunately, the actual budgets associated with arts and culture are miniscule and impossible to sustain long term management of cultural resources across the country. Additionally, funding to the arts still remains extremely unequitable and subjective. Whether we like it or not, privatization is one of the main engines for change in this century. In Europe and America, it affects all levels of government including culture. In general, privatization is considered a guarantor of increased efficiency. While this is true for goods in general- an efficiency driven society will produce more goods at more affordable rates for more people- it isn’t necessarily true for all types of goods, especially those produced by social, educational and cultural sectors. These areas require a more sophisticated trade-off between efficiency and equity, especially in the view of long term benefits for