Mumbai's main museum gets a miniature upgrade

As you go round Regal Circle the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSVS), formerly the Prince of Wales Museum, is still a striking sight.

An amalgamation of Indo-Saracenic styles, the architect George Wittet topped Mumbai's main museum with a massive dome whose inner vaulting arches are believed to be inspired by the Gol Gumbaz at Bijapur.

Set in three acres of crescent-shaped gardens in South Mumbai, the grounds also point to how open space itself has become an anachronism in this builder-ravaged city where every important official building gets the ubiquitous "Chhatrapati Shivaji" stamp.

But in a city starved of museums, especially new ones, the CSVS is carrying the torch for Mumbai along with the recently renovated Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Byculla.

Last week it received an Honorable Mention at the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation announced in Bangkok on September 1 and recently also re-opened its Indian Miniature Painting Gallery.

I meet with Vandana Prapanna, curator of the Indian Miniature Painting Gallery on a Friday morning. The museum is buzzing noisily with people, so different from the silent solemnity of museums abroad. The central atrium is filled with foreign tourists, lone scholars, school kids, out-of-towners usually with entire families dropped off in busloads.

Prapanna points out that the painting gallery had not really changed in 40 years and the revamp was badly needed. Most visitors used to bypass the gallery for the objects and statuary in the other sections. 

A little background on miniatures

Indian miniature paintings drew the stories of gods to illustrate religious texts, originally on palm leaf. Then came paper and illustrated books. 

The museum's collection, one of the best in the country, represents the main schools of Indian miniatures: Mughal, Rajasthani, Pahari and Deccani. They are arranged in the styles of the schools they were painted in, and chronologically within that display.

Palm leaf manuscripts dating from the 11th and 12th centuries to Pahari paintings of the 19th century are set in new tilted glass cabinets.

With eye-level, easy-to-read text above, lit by LED lights that allow the colors and pigments to be seen in the right light (and without the damage of UV rays), it makes for comfortable viewing. 

Miniatures existed before photography or the Internet allowed us to record customs, court life (now city life), living spaces, occupations, sport and costume. Prapanna points out block prints on the garments shown in the paintings from centuries ago that are part of our living tradition even today. 

Material evidence to accompany references in the paintings have been displayed in cabinets alongside paintings: like chogas or coats, daggers, swords, shields, turbans, cummerbunds. Manuscripts, both unbound and bound and books are also new additions on display.

I particularly liked to see the acquisition of miniature paintings by artists still working in the tradition, to keep the museum's collection up to date.

Old school interactive

Don a turban and have a picture taken. For Rs 10 you can have a print out of a miniature drawing you trace on a monitor. Or a rubber stamp of a motif on a card to take away as a memento.

There's now a display of materials they used to draw miniatures, and a short film that shows the technique behind the process.

These new additions are certainly pulling in more of an audience while I am there. A young Iranian visitor comes up to us and asks Prapanna if she is a "leader," then points to a 17th century Mughal miniature.

Reading the Persian text on it, the visitor says excitedly, "But this is Iranian painting, this is a Hafez poem!"

Clearly the man had come to India today, bereft of the knowledge of his countrymen who came here six centuries ago and left behind a wonderful legacy.

Curator's choice: Animal fables and elephant escapades

Prapanna has some favorites too, and points out three to me.

A painting from the Mewar school by the artist Manohar, "Performance of Ashwamedha Sacrifice" from the 16th century. The museum has 24 folios from this Ramayana set in its possession.

The second one she points out is a particularly lovely painting by Anwar-i-Suhayli, an artist from Mughal emporor Akbar's studio who painted animal fables.

The painting has an interesting history. It was in the library of a British army man in Poona and was badly damaged in a fire.

The folio was bought and eventually donated by Dr. Alma Latifi to the museum and restored at the museum's Conservation Studio.

The third, titled "Escaping Elephant," is a finely and minimally drawn painting from the Kota school, circa 18th century, showing movement and vigor.

My favorite though -- for its inadvertent humor -- is a Pahari school painting of Balwant Singh getting his beard trimmed, circa the 18th century.

Jnanapravaha's diploma course in Indian Aesthetics

A turn around a museum gallery can pique an interest that’s so intense you must find a book store or a study course right away.

Here's the cure:

The Strand Book Stall at nearby Pheroze Shah Mehta Road has a good selection of books on miniature painting or Indian Art, as has the museum's shop.

I also discovered, and joined, a one-year post graduate diploma course in Indian Aesthetics at Jnanapravaha, in the Fort area. It takes place in an exposed-brick lined room in Queen's Mansion which feels like you're sitting in a newly discovered archaeological site.

Jnanapravaha is a platform for lectures on all manner of fields within the arts, addressed by learned and proficient professors and artistes. Rashmi Poddar is the force behind Jnanapravaha's Mumbai chapter (the parent foundation is in Varanasi) and the lectures are open to all. 

Here I have heard Walter Spink on Ajanta, Ashok Kumar Das on Mughal miniatures and Naman Ahuja on terracotta.

It is a Mumbai art aficionado's haven, a living museum, if you will, to make up for all those yet to be built in this city.