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Journalism of Courage
The Three Stooges with their own brand of comedy regaled audiences in the cinema of the 8217;40s and the 8217;50s. In one film, the Stooges are carpenters impersonating dentists. They find a manual on dentistry, buy a second-hand dentist8217;s chair and set themselves up in business. Two of the Stooges are then shown drilling a hole with a hammer and chisel into the tooth of a man who is writhing madly while the third reads instructions from the dentistry manual.
While this was supposed to be comic and thankfully, fictitious, there are people who do not appreciate the dedication and knowledge required to be in control of a particular profession. Such an attitude definitely exists with medicine where quacks are discovered all the time and I am sure that it happens with other professions as well. Religion is unquestionably not a profession but fake sadhus turn it into one. They put on the outer manifestation of holy men without undergoing the long process of internal purification and then con people in distress.
But the work and the ultimate decisions on strategy and policy are done by the conservators, for they are the ones equipped with the requisite theoretical knowledge, practical experience and related ethics that are implicit in every profession.
Conservators bring together the theory in their heads with the experience of their hands. Unfortunately, there is at times a tendency among these related professionals to believe that they too can be conservators because they see conservation as an extension of their own professions. Undoubtedly, they also view conservation as a profession secondary to their own and believe it to be simpler than it actually is. But while they call themselves conservators, few do the work themselves unlike authentic conservators. Most of the actual work is done by manual labour or bricklayers in the case of architectural conservation and by casual 8216;restorers8217; and painters in the case of paintings.
What has distressed me is a notice by the National Museum, Delhi Hindustan Times, Thursday, July 24, 2003, that threatens to distort the picture even further. It offers a three-month conservation course in 8216;all types of paintings8217;. Even three years are not enough for such a thing and I can only visualise the many Frankensteins that will be let loose on 8216;all types of paintings8217;, armed with the knowledge of three months, sanctified by the National Museum.
The notice invites candidates from art academies, departments of archaeology, museums, archives and allied institutions. The museum prefers graduates, 8216;preferably in science8217;. The confusion in what the museum desires is obvious: the connection between art and science, essential in conservation is not properly stated. The National Museum Institute that teaches conservation could be the bastion for the proper understanding of conservation in the country. How unfortunate then, that it has bungled so badly and made confusion more confounded.
