Sabyasachi Mukherjee

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sanghralaya

British Museum

Tamil Nadu

Africa

Brinda Somaya

Bihar

The complete story of the CSMVS’s biggest ever exhibition that will tell India’s story through 210 objects, and will open in about ten days from now., director general of the, is overseeing the placement of the Discobolus, one of several Roman copies made of a lost bronze original made in the 5th century BC. The marble statue of the athlete stooping to throw the discus is among the highlights of India and the World: A History in Nine Stories, which opens on November 11. The priceless consignment has given Mukherjee sleepless nights, but he says he owes it to the city.Mukherjee is referring to the exhibition comprising 210 objects borrowed from 28 institutions and three private collections including the Department of Archaeology and Museums, Telangana; Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh; Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata; the Museum of Christian Art, Goa and the. Collaborating with so many government institutions came with its own set of challenges. “We first had to convince these institutions to lend us their precious objects. For many government institutions a committee was required to be set up to decide whether the exhibit could travel, followed by loan agreements, evaluation committees, inspecting the works, packing and shipment of these objects — the paper work required was endless” says chief project coordinator Kamini Sawhney. “Displaying these priceless antiquities is a huge challenge.”For the last one-and-a-half years, five spaces inside the CSMVS —Coin Gallery, Jehangir Nicholson Gallery, Premchand Roychand Gallery, Seminar Room, and the Curator’s Gallery — have turned into one long labyrinth. “Like you scoop a hardboiled egg, we had to completely scoop out what was there in these galleries, including the false ceilings. We had to lay out a complete climate control system as per international museum standards. Air conditioners will only control the temperature, but this climate control system monitors the relative humidity in the air, as people come in and go out,” says Anupam Sah, consulting conservationist at CSMVS.Supported by the Tata Trust and Getty Foundation, the exhibition began with a conversation between Mukherjee and the former British Museum director Neil MacGregor. “If I remember correctly, the discussion happened with MacGregor immediately after the Cyrus Cylinder exhibition, in 2014. I wanted to know how we could narrate the history of India through objects,” says Mukherjee. “But the challenge was that our history dates back some 2 million years. How do we accommodate that kind of timeline in a 15, 000 sq. ft. space?”In 2016, Mukherjee and MacGregor came about with nine stories. The show begins with the journey of civilisation of man — relating to India and the world — and winds up with a story exploring time and space, with the help of contemporary art. “The first section explores the time when there was no concept of political boundaries and yet there were similarities,” says Mukherjee. “We also found a similar kind of stone tool in Europe and in Asia. And the stone tool we found here was the Attirampakkam hand- axe fromdating back to 1.7 – 1.07 million years ago. Within that story of ‘Shared Beginnings’ we move to agricultural life and then we see differences in different cultures. The idea was to understand the beginning of human civilisation.”Co-curators Naman Ahuja and J D Hill of the British Museum, were appointed for further studies. “Each time we had discussions, the difficulty was about agreeing on which were going to be these nine stories,” says Ahuja. “On the one hand, we need great architecture from one period. On the other, every culture has its own compulsions. Just because we have great architecture in India from the Mauryan period doesn’t mean somebody will have great architecture from the same period.”The biggest challenge was to get the narrative and compulsions of the exhibition right. Aesthetics, according to Ahuja, is not just about colour, form, line or texture, “but we are not creating an art exhibition; we are creating a history exhibition and we had to find visual exemplars that will typify the history.”Through the process, one of the most rewarding collaborations was with the Archaeological Survey of India. “The historical collections lie in the old storerooms of the Purana Qila in Delhi and inside there is a treasure trove of study material. One of my absolute favourites in a Chinese blue and white dish that has a fish on it. It was from the imperial kitchen of Muhammad bin Tughluq. When they did excavations in Tughlaqabad, they found 70 blue and white ceramics. These blue and whites are all made around the 1340s. That makes them amongst the oldest blue and whites in the world. Yuan period ceramics are extremely rare and this shows that India was importing ceramics from China even in those days,” says Ahuja.The British Museum has loaned over 120 objects to the CSMVS, including a Rembrandt sketch. The choice was made judiciously. Ahuja says, “We had to choose those objects by Durer or Rembrandt that were connected to India. So that Indians start looking at what was happening in the rest of the world through Rembrandt. It was necessary to tell the history of the world from an Indian perspective.”The current director of British Museum, Dr Hartwig Fischer, says that the project establishes a dialogue between objects, cultures, institutions and the public to provide a new and rich perspective on moments in Indian history. “The wider, global context of these moments will be suggested by objects from the British Museum, including a head of the Emperor Hadrian, and one of the earliest hand axes found inwhich speaks of our shared beginnings, while the contemporary Throne of Weapons from Mozambique comments on globalisation and empire but is ultimately a symbol of reconciliation and peace.”According to leading architect and urban conservationist, whose firm designed the exhibition, what helped was the synergy amongst the various stakeholders from the inception. “We sat through workshops at the British Museum as well as the CSMVS to understand the exhibition, its curatorial vision as well as the history of the objects.” Somaya’s daughter Nandini Sampat, who worked with her on the project, adds, “It became our responsibility after all to narrate their story. We want the visitor to be transported back in to time.”However, the execution of the narration was possible within what was permissible. “We had to maintain international museum security standards,” says Sampat. “Platforms with a depth of 1-metre had to be built for objects that are in-case. We had to build pedestals for ex-case objects; all this while carefully integrating them into our design.” Australia-based Lighting Design Partnership’s [LDP] Managing Director, Dhruvajyoti Ghose has come on board to meet the lighting specifications. “Light has been invisibly interwoven into the narrative through a coordinated set of design ideas. It is used as a medium to evoke the context of time without distracting attention from the objects on display.” This will be the museum’s biggest exhibition ever — both in terms of logistics and scale, and, at many levels, it can also be viewed as a practical engineering guide involving both physics and biochemistry.Up on the first floor, a whole team under the aegis of Sah is ensuring the Mauryan Pillar (weighing close to 750 kilos) from theMuseum is being installed correctly with the help of a mini crane. The Mauryan Pillar is huge, but not as big as the 850-kilo contemporary art sculpture by artist L N Tallur from the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, in Delhi. It had to be lifted by a crane to the second floor. “A day prior to that, a test run was done. It wouldn’t fit the lift and it was too heavy to go on the stairway. So, we cut the levers of the window and lift the whole thing by crane,” says Sawhney.Assistant director of CSMVS, Manisha Nene, who’s in charge of receiving all the consignments from the show, has spent most of the time over the last few weeks tallying objects that have entered the museum premises. She recalls, “It is not that we got Tallur’s work here and figured it out later. It was all scientifically calculated over the last few months. We had to bring that stone object by road. I was constantly in touch with the shipment team, giving them instructions and informing Mr Mukherjee where they have reached, till it finally got here.”“The process and specifications of each work is different. We have to protect every object from vibration, scratch and breakage, and transport them in climate=controlled vehicles. Tallur’s sculpture had to be studied properly, before a crate was built around the sculpture that was layered in multiple padded foam sheets and plastic,” says Delhi-based Rajeev Dhawan, operations head of Fine Arts, which shipped most of the artworks.Meanwhile, a structural audit was carried out to check if the 95-year-old building could take the weight of all the heavy objects brought in. “We had to give the British Museum an infrastructure report,” shares Mukherjee. “And because we are bringing such heavy objects, some reinforcement had to be done.”Girish Wadhwa was assigned the task of carrying out the structural audit over seven days. “The age, importance and heritage status of the building and the load patterns on the building were the key factors that were considered,” says Wadhwa. Alongside, Sah and his team are overseeing the conservation of the various objects on display. “It’s a standard practice that before something goes for display, it has to be ensured that it’s both fit for display and transport,” he says. “We have to visualise every risk. We work at a zero-risk scenario including 10 people climbing on a 1000 kg sculpture or a woman’s saree getting stuck in an object. You see, it is all precipitating with the dust. The dust we will remove, the exhibition will remain.”