Apr 23, 2011 - Oct 09, 2011 
Industrial Arts Gallery | Origins of Mumbai Gallery | Kamalnayan Bajaj Gallery
Jitish Kallat is one of India's most prolific and recognized contemporary artists and the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum is pleased to present his exhibition 'Fieldnotes: tomorrow was here yesterday', which is the second in a series of exhibitions that showcase the work of contemporary artists from Sir J. J. School of Art. During the 19th and early 20th century the position of curator of the Museum and the principal of the School of Art were held by the same person. Many of the objects in the Museum were produced by students of the School. The exhibition series is planned as a residency where artists respond to the Museum's history and archives.
This exhibition has been conceived as an extended curatorial collaboration between the artist and the curator. During its five month run, Kallat will continue to engage and make interventions in the space in an extended conversation with the museum collection, its architecture and its library. Kallat visited the Museum over a period of two years, thinking deeply about its layered history which is intertwined with both the early modern movement in art and the socio-economic development of the city.
As an artist whose work draws its raw material from the city, sifting its dreams and articulating its challenges, Kallat's work has a profound resonance within the space of the Museum. He has appropriated its architecture and intervened within the display cases creating new readings of the collection and the Museum's history, invigorating his works with a tension that includes both hindsight and foresight. The idyll of the museum which represents the aspirations of the city's founding fathers stands in sharp contrast to the battle for life that is played out on the city's streets and forms the underlying theme of Kallat's works. In describing the politics of space both physically and metaphysically the artist challenges our perceptions of reality and what appears banal acquires a disturbing hyper reality.
The informal dialogue is an invitation to collectively explore the relationship of the ‘museum’ to ‘time’ and that of ‘art’ to a ‘place’. This evening of dialogue - held alongside the closing of Jitish Kallat’s solo exhibition ‘Fieldnotes: Tomorrow was Here Yesterday’, curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta - looks at the museum as an instrument to mark time, its very presence offering a revision of the past and the possibility to envision the future alongside a dialogue of the relationship of art to time and place.
It invites speakers and the audience to interact about the notion of the museum as a site of 'conservation' but equally as a site of 'conversation' whose broader field of play is the city; in the specific case of the Dr Bhau Daji Lad, the Museum takes the city both as it's subject and as its primary audience. Thus the museum’s relationship to time is marked through place and location, equally 'art and place' is as much about time and history.
Free, open to all tours of the exhibition in English, Hindi and Marathi were conducted by the Museum’s curatorial team every Saturday and Sunday.
Inspired by the exhibition, the Museum offered free walkthroughs, self led worksheets and workshops for educational institutions and NGOs for free.
The Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai City Museum seeks to serve the community as an Institution dedicated to excellence in cultural education through exhibitions and unique visual and intellectual media
An Institution of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. Supported by the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. Restored by INTACH, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage
Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum
Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Botanical Udyan and Zoo (Rani Baug),
91/A, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Road,
Byculla East Mumbai 400027 India
T: +91 22 23741234
10:00 am - 5:30 pm
Closed on all Wednesdays and select public holidays.
