Arty beginning
Rajshree Pathy talks about her plans for an art institute and a museum of contemporary art
PHOTO: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMAFIRST STEP Rajshree Pathy wants to spread art awareness
Reading of art ‘events’ in various newspapers and watching them on television’s ‘entertainment’ slots has injured the sensibilities of many art lovers and connoisseurs. Ever so often, artists like S.H. Raza, Anjolie Ela Menon and Satish Gujral have registered their protest at the lack of proper art appreciation courses in colleges. Concerns have been articulated — minus any results.
In such a scenario, an energetic Rajshree Pathy appears as quite a ray of hope. Pathy, an art collector for over 25 years and a businesswoman from Coimbatore,declared what can be taken as a positive step to speed up art appreciation in India.
She is going to open an art institute and museum of contemporary art under the Coimbatore College of Contemporary Art (COCCA). She has named the entire venture Contemplate.
Shares Pathy, who is also a design enthusiast: “These two art establishments would be in the same premises of about three-and-a-half lakh square feet, which was earlier devoted to my textile mill. The art institute will have post graduate, under graduate and short certificate courses. We will have a world class faculty, also from abroad. We will focus on all kinds of media separately —visual art, video, audio, digital, new media et al.”
Not only that, the courses, promises Pathy, would also include interesting topics like ‘weaving spirituality in art’ and keep a special focus on craft.The museum
The museum will display works of contemporary artists. To begin with, it will have works mounted from her own collections, from Raza to Rameshwar Broota, Souza to Chintan Upadhyay, and so on. The museum, asserts Pathy, “would not be a dead place with two visitors at a time”.
It will be a hub of interactions with the artists whose works would…More
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