The National Art Gallery: A crisis of commitment
Inaugurated in 2007 with great fanfare and 15 curated shows showcasing the country’s leading talent, it promised an optimistic future for the NAG and visual arts in the country. The then minister of culture, in his foreward in the inaugural catalog claimed “…the new national gallery is a symbol of the government’s resolve to place the arts in the mainstream of polity and ensure that artistic activity is not divorced from decision-making at the highest level… the inaugural exhibition is a welcome beginning to our vision of a new Pakistan — a nation that lives in peace, prosperity and gives creative articulation to artistic impulse.” The CEO of Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) called the gallery an important statement that recognised the status of arts in society and went on to say that it is time to share the honours of artistic achievements by Pakistanis with the rest of the world. He called upon the art community “… to move ahead as members of a caravan of artists”.
The dozens of artists from all over the country invited to attend the inauguration too anchored their collective hope in the NAG but soon they saw promises turn into empty claims and the brick and mortar edifice was not allowed to become a national institution as the state failed to give the NAG autonomy or the funds required to fulfil its mandate.
Today, the NAG is faced with challenges that stem from wrong decisions taken in its early months. The shifting of the offices of PNCA not only usurped the NAG’s office space but forced them to relocate in space planned for other departments. This physical presence of the PNCA created a misleading perception, that as the head office of the PNCA, the NAG’s space was open for use by all the arts. A financial and administrative shift also took place within the PNCA, which is the parent organisation of the NAG and the much-needed funds to establish a professional team and facilities at this nascent institution, never materialised. Instead of the PNCA supporting the NAG to become independent, the PNCA began to compete with the NAG for the small slice of the financial pie available to promoting culture.
The second major setback came when the PNCA decided to move its displaced performing arts wing into the NAG after the Liaquat Memorial Hall was arbitrarily handed over to the Rawalpindi campus of the National College of the Arts. The art community registered a strong protest against this encroachment at the time of the inauguration and it was given a promise by the government of the day that this would be a temporary arrangement. Unfortunately, this has not been so and seven years later, the performing arts activities within the NAG have increased and two Masters’ galleries on the first floor have been taken over permanently for rehearsal and storage. The NAG auditorium too is almost permanently booked for performances, marginalising visual art seminars, etc.
The NAG has been limping along with all these problems but since mid-2013, the situation has exacerbated because of administrative ad hocism at the helm of the PNCA. The largest cultural body has no head and bureaucrats who do not have any knowledge of the field have been taking decisions for the NAG that are detrimental to its mandate. The control of NAG’s funds in the hands of people who do not have an understanding of the working of a public visual arts institution has led to a failure to hire competent curators, researchers, etc. and set aside a budget for exhibitions that are pivotal to the operations of a national gallery. The indiscriminate and frequent hiring out of the NAG galleries to bring in revenue has led to a situation where the permanent collection is not available to the visitors and the standard of work on display is beyond the control of the NAG. Both these situations violate the objectives of this institution and need to be halted to save the legitimacy and dignity of the NAG.
To stem the steady decline in the last seven years and turn it into a premier public institution, the NAG has to be run by an independent board of directors drawn from senior art professionals and civil society. The state, which has spent millions on building the NAG, cannot abandon it and must take responsibility to implement these changes and find in its coffers funds to hire competent professionals to execute curated exhibitions, research, outreach, conservation and archiving besides salaries for the staff and maintenance. According to the official mandate, the NAG is exclusively dedicated to the visual arts and all non-visual art activities must halt immediately.
The NAG, as a repository of the visual arts legacy, is where the people reclaim their narrative from imperial patrons and colonial elite to give them a sense of the collective and pride in national achievements. Such institutions have to be understood as an integral part of the democratic process. We need to not only make the NAG a vibrant institution to connect citizens with the legacy of the masters, but also Pakistan’s other successful contemporary artists who have won recognition around the globe and need to be showcased on home ground.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 18th, 2014.
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Willingness to accept shared history or bask in reflected glory? We know what happened to honoring Bhagat Singh who gave his life for freedom from British.
I will second the writer. NAG should be salvaged from the shadows of its parent organization-PNCA. It must be underscored that the crisis of of PNCA is not of bad management or financial crisis but over management. As an apex cultural body grown over time, its various wings are yet flocked together under one roof- and the centralized control of the Director General. So, the breathing space that is essential for each art form to grow is being encroached upon, and you have let every customer to go unhappy! The institution requires an overhauling before it can begin to play its role in national development. The writer also refers to the "arbitrarily" handing over of Liaquat Memorial Hall to NCA Rawalpindi, a point that I would like to clarify. Surely, loss of Liaquat Memorial Hall is a serious blow to the outreach of PNCA- now restricted to the exclusive audience of Islamabad. Quite rightly stated, it was a mutual understanding between NCA and PNCA that the NCA Rawalpindi Campus will move to Islamabad, and the Liaquat Memorial Hall will be handed back to PNCA to restart its operations- to give expression to the artists of Rawalpindi and Potohar and the citizens of Rawalpindi a cultural space of interaction. Since 2005, National Puppet Theater has been allowed to stay in the part of Liaquat Memorial Hall at NCA premises without a charge. Thus NCA has fulfilled its commitment of supporting PNCA's cause. NCA is still hoping that as and when land is given to NCA to shift its campus to Islamabad, PNCA will be able to reclaim Liaquat Memorial Hall and send performing arts wing, back to where it came from! It will create more space for other wings to grow, especially NAG- physically in its present location in Islamabad. I hope this conversation leads to serious rethinking of our cultural policies and practices which effects us all- across institutions- in Pakistan.