Vision Document of Lalit Kala Akademi

The Lalit Kala Akademi is the National Academy of Art, charged, in the preamble to Its Constitution, to achieve a two-fold objective, to foster and coordinate activities in the sphere of creative visual arts, and, to promote thereby the cultural unity of the country. The Constitution spells out the programmatic functions for achieving this twin objective as also powers. The first category of powers and functions is academic, the encouragement and promotion of study and research in creative arts with a special focus on survey, preservation, encouragement and projection of folk, tribal and traditional arts, crafts and artists and crafts persons. This is proposed to be achieved through recognition, scholarship and prizes to deserving artists and art institutions, publication, aid and social security. A second category of powers and functions is infrastructural, to be achieved through the establishment, encouragement, coordination of regional arts centres, State Lalit Kala Akademis, acquisition, maintenance, disposal of land, property and funds for promoting its objects and works. A third category of powers and functions is relational, to promote cooperation of artists, art associations, galleries, educational institutions, museums, regional art organizations and State Akademies, to foster cultural contacts within the country and with other countries; to further exchange of ideas among various schools of art; and, to create and maintain a library, covering world art, to cater to institutional needs. The fourth category of powers and functions is residual, to do all such other acts, on its own, or, in collaboration, that are incidental or conducive to the fulfillment of above objectives.

The above powers and functions may be seen as responsibilities in the perspective of the statement of Maulana Azad Kalam Azad, Minister for Education, Govemment of India, at the inauguration of the Akademi on August 5, 1955. He said that the Government's role was secondary, to help the Akademi provide inspiration to artists throughout the country; preserve the glorious traditions of the past and enrich them by the work of modern artists; improve standards and refine public taste; promote art education, to develop the finer aspects of personality; and divert energy from destructive into socially constructive channels. The recommendation of the first Art Education Seminar organized by the Akademi in 1956 was to harness arts to produce a fully integrated personality, well-adjusted within oneself as well as in relation to the environment, to prepare one for life as well as for living. The recommendation of one of the first jury of luminaries on national awards was to discard imitationism, sensationalism, pastiche and febrile styles, derived from various sources, and to cultivate maturity and integrity, digestive of diverse influences, and drinking deep from sources of Indian imagination. World renowned correspondents for the Triennale, India in 1968 like Herbert Read, Henry Moore, Joan Miro and John Berger gave a clarion call to India to draw from its ancient civilization a new wisdom, which could serve as the nucleus of a new and human democracy, a universal language of peace and solidarity, and, to overthrow the Western imperialist hegemonic idea of art as property, which was a barrier to further developments.

All these objectives are incidental to the objective of promoting the cultural unity of the country. Unity of the country is to be promoted by recognizing that the diverse differences and integral unity of the nation or humankind are obverse and reverse of the same coin; that tradition and modernity, urban and rural, visual and performing, local and global, figural and non-figural arts have evolved as different ways to express the same human urgency for self-renewal; that arts and lifeways practices, beauty and utility, embellishment and necessity, tangible heritage and intangible memory, knowledge and skills, arts of decoration, resource management, ecological sustenance and location specific linguistic, cultural or economic developments are mutually reinforcive and coexistent entities.

The Lalit Kala Akademi proposes to fulfill its charter to promote the cultural unity of the country by recognizing, exhibiting, disseminating and furthering this indelible connection between life and arts, and by transcending temporal and spatial boundaries of past and present, natural and social sciences, regions and nations. It proposes to combine ex situ display with in situ revitalization, collection of objects with recollection of ideas; include all rural and urban hinterland communities rather than a metropolitan minority, irrespective of sectarian, denominational, racial persuasions; build bridges of intercultural, interdisciplinary understanding, in a comparative, historical and future enhancing perspective.

Lalit Kala Akademi looks at itself as a platform for asserting the unique Indian genius of uniting nature, culture and development, mind and body, phenomenal and noumenal; of making arts living, life artistic; decolonizing and reinventing cognitive categories of art in education; and developing a counter argument and strategy through arts, to stem the engulfing tide of technification, homogenization and desacralisation, released through the planet earth over the past 200 years.

Programmes have been proposed to strengthen the foundation of the cultural unity of the country and make these impregnable and unassailable. Art education is to be promoted, to reverse amnesia and aphasia, loss of memory and speech of arts and associated knowledge systems, among the myriad oral language communities. Interface of contemporary, folk, tribal, traditional and contemporary arts is to be ensured for bringing about a convergence of continuity and innovation. A public art movement is to be advanced to generate employment among disadvantaged communities. Inter institutional, inter departmental, interdisciplinary, intercultural synergy has to be put in place to create exhibitions, publications and field initiatives. A museum of relations has been conceptualized, to transform museums of objects into demuseumizing museums of ideas, habitats and communities. International and national art events are to be converted into action research instruments for regenerating the living museum of the country, curated by its communities Diaspora of Indian ideas, patterns, motifs of art abroad and the international Diaspora in India is to be brought into conversation. The Akademi has to be invested with the Idea and personality intended for it by its founding fathers and foundational charter. The character and meaning rather than the number or grandeur of events will be the consideration for encompassing the remotest recesses of the nation. India's untold riches, art treasures and ideas have to be brought to the fore, to rebuild it on its civilizational foundations, strengthen these through globally available knowledge, nurture an integrated human personality, as a fulcrum of human solidarity, and, to enrich and humanize the world. The cultural unity of the Indian nation will be promoted through its arts that have reconciled diverse differences, and bound the wounds of the world through an ale embracing humanism.

Note:-

The vision embedded in the preamble, powers and functions of the Constitution by the founding fathers has been impaired by subsequent amendments in the body of the Constitution. Successive Committees, set up by the Govt., and the Parliament, including the Haksar Committee and the Parliamentary Standing Committee, in its 201st report and the High Court have suggested that the Constitution be made simple, transparent and effective to rid the Lalit Kala Akademi of the infighting, litigation and politics, not envisaged by the founding fathers. A High Powered Committee has been set up by the Govt., as per Parliamentary Standing Committee recommendation, to ensure this, and this has been reported to the High Court, which has fixed the next hearing in July, 2014. The Vision Document is subject to enlargement on the amendment of the Constitution, which is to be reported to High Court by July and to the Parliamentary Standing Committee.