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Dr. Milo Beach was
awarded the Colonel James Tod award by the Maharana Mewar Foundation
earlier this year. Museum director, teacher and scholar of Indian
painting, he has written, lectured and organised international
exhibitions on paintings from Rajasthan and the Mughal court. He
headed the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution
and the Freer Gallery in Washington but retired in 2001. He now
devotes his time to research and lectures. Excerpts from a
free-wheeling chat:
On James Tod Award
I can't imagine getting another award that means so much to me. I've
read James Tod ever since I started out in the 1950s and have always
gone back to reading his work. Rajasthan is my favourite place; we
come back to Rajasthan virtually every time I'm in India.
The Sackler Gallery
It was a funny situation because there was already a major museum of
Asian Art at the Smithsonian and it was limited by the fact that no
other museum could borrow from it and neither could it borrow from
another collection and showcase art within its own building. So
Sackler had the mandate to be active as a museum, to do the things
museums do now; in terms of loans and exhibitions. We had to build
up collections, find staff, make it into an institution that would
have some impact on the American public and do something for the
Asian art that no other institution had done.
Rajasthani miniatures
It has always been easier to write about Mughal paintings because
you can write about it with a European art history vocabulary.
Rajasthani painting has always interested me more because it's
always been more difficult to deal with.
The Badshahnama exhibition
It taught me lots of new things about Mughal painting and how it
operates. What I found most satisfying was to bring such a major
manuscript back to India. The reception here was wonderful; an
audience intensely interested in the paintings - we provided them
with microscopes - they got involved in all the minutest details of
what people were wearing ... The American public look at paintings
and walk down the hall.
The Indian miniatures scene
With the recent opening of smaller properties as hotels, more
paintings have become known. We have such an enormous amount of
material to deal with than we had 10-15 years ago. The wall
paintings in Bundi are the earliest and the most important in
Rajasthan but no one is preserving them. They are still in private
hands and in a very dangerous and precarious position. I'm observing
a fast deterioration, which is shocking. All of them are evidence to
historical evolution. There are a substantial number of tourists
coming to India and in crude terms these paintings can generate
income for India. They are a part of the country's great historical
fabric. They really should be taken care of.
Artistic interactions
I want to come back to Rajasthan to study wall paintings; I'm
interested in observing how they interact with each other. How
Deogarh's paintings interact with other smaller schools of art. It's
intriguing how people move, choose to take from somebody else's life
or culture. What is astonishing about working in Bundi is how it was
in touch with the world. It wasn't as big as Mewar, yet it was very
cosmopolitan and very international culturally. I'm interested in
having Americans understand how international these cultures are
because Americans need to know more about other cultures than they
do. It provides a better model for them.
Advice to students
We need to teach people why these paintings have to preserved: how
we can learn from them… Sadly India needs far more art historians
and architectural historians because it has so much material. I like
to tell my students that if you sit for half an hour to observe a
certain group of paintings, you are going to find a major discovery.
You could build your entire career on that one major discovery;
that's what makes it exciting for me. |
