The history display

At the India International Centre,where her talk on another interesting facet of art history is about to commence,Singh speaks of how the value ascribed to an art object changes over time. So while you may be forgiven for supposing that exquisitely detailed Mughal paintings were always collected for their aesthetics and the stories they told,Singh tells you that before Independence they more likely found their way into early museum collections as samples for textile patterns and rug designs.

As the concept of value evolved,so did museums. “In the 1930s,the Gaekwad of Baroda sent an agent to London to buy one work each of the European Old Masters. Till the 1980s,this was the most important collection of their works in all of Asia,” says Singh. Today,she notes the popularity of palace museums and heritage hotels,as well as the discernible trend of religious institutions and temples—Akshardham and ISKCON,for example—going into ‘museum mode’ and adopting the curatorial path to educate visitors about holy objets d’art. Singh sprinkles the conversation with curious nuggets about museums as welcoming public spaces—how,for example,in south India,on Kaanal Pongal (‘kaanal’ means to see) people flock not just to temples but also to museums—and as efforts at preserving a rich cultural legacy,as is the case with the delightful little museums set up by the Tibetan government-in-exile.

Singh,who led the curatorial team for ‘Where in the World’,a show from the Lekha and Anupam Poddar collection of contemporary Indian art for the Devi Art Foundation,enjoys the challenge of “creating a space for art and a sense of journey,of arrival”. Before she began teaching the “dynamics,processes,biases and politics” that turn artifacts into fine art,at JNU seven years ago,Singh was visiting curator at a California museum that had a large collection of Indian miniatures.

Speaking on ‘Fantasies of History in Indian Painting’,as part of the Frontiers of History series of lectures at IIC,she stirs up a discussion on how,as Mughal painting got more naturalistic and believable,it also tended to persuade viewers that a certain version of the facts was the truth. The scene of the execution of Khan Jahan Lodi in the 17th-century Padshanama,for example,seems at first glance to reflect the Mughal urge to “capture the here and now with the knowledge that it is history as it is being made”,but turns out to be a deliberately inaccurate portrayal. Touching upon the possibility of Akbar having been dyslexic—hence his commissioning of extensively illustrated books—and the humanisation of the emperor in the second Akbarnama,Singh admits to “gazing at the frontiers of history across the no-man’s land” that divides it from art history,which pretty much sums up her entire repertoire.