Panikkar giving shape to curatorship curriculum

VADODARA: As suspended professor Shivaji Panikkar awaits for MS University (MSU) authorities to accept his resignation, he is planning to nurture next generation curators. Former head of department of arts and aesthetics, Panikkar who had faced ire in an obscenity row, is busy giving shape to a curatorship curriculum.
Along with Association of Academics, Artists and Citizens for University Autonomy (ACUA) and Santhosh Sadanandan, Panikkar has conceptualised Curating Indian Visual Culture: Theory and Practice' a travelling workshop series, the first of which will be hosted in the city in September.
Five national workshops will be held in different parts of the country with national and international experts invited as speakers. The initiative is supported by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), which is funded by Sir Dorabji Tata Trust.
"At present, there are no institutions in our country where curating course is conducted. One of the crucial reasons behind the glaring absence of critical curating in India is the lack of supportive institutional systems that encourage and enable the practitioners in the field to conceptualise and materialise their critical quests. Recognising the dire need for curatorial studies, we decided to hold workshops to give shape to a programme which can be adopted by art schools," said Panikkar.
During the six-day workshops, there will be deliberations, discussions and ideation addressing the issues in the current curating context, builds an academic discourse around the practice of critical curating, while keeping institutional development at the foreground of the programme.
"There will be qualified and trained curators well aware of the art scene both nationally and internationally. This will induce professionalism which is required in today's time when Indian art and artists have gone international. One will also see the quality of art shows in the country improving with better curators involved in conceptualising exhibition," added Panikkar.
Each workshop will have 15 participants including masters level students and arts professionals with seats reserved for local and regional participants. "Those who want to participate will have to send a curatorial note to be selected for the workshop," said Panikkar.
Some of the best names from the art field across the globe have been invited as resource persons. These include Geeta Kapur, Sudhir Patwardhan, Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Jyotindra Jain, Vivan Sundaram, Rahab Alana and Raimi Olakunle Gbadamosi. "One can say that the foundation stone of this course will be laid in our city," Panikkar shared.