[Scattered throughout the four levels of Terminal 2 of Mumbai’s international airport are more than 5,500 pieces of Indian art and handicrafts, including tribal totem poles and a 3-D map of Mumbai built from recycled chips and circuit boards. Together they make up the Jaya He, GVK New Museum.]
By Vindu Goel
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The installation “India
Greets” at Terminal 2 of the Mumbai airport. About 50
million people pass
through the airport every year, but many do not even
notice the art. Credit Atul Loke for The New York Times
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MUMBAI, India — You
could easily pass through the most sprawling art museum in India without
realizing you had even been there.
Scattered
throughout the four levels of Terminal 2 of Mumbai’s international airport are
more than 5,500 pieces of Indian art and handicrafts, including tribal totem
poles and a 3-D map of Mumbai built from recycled chips and circuit boards.
Together they make up the Jaya He, GVK New Museum.
The X-shaped, ultramodern terminal handles all international
and many domestic flights for the country’s commercial hub. So it is foremost a
working airport, and the 50 million people who come through every year are
there for one primary purpose: to get to and from their airplanes.
“There is anxiety built in,” said Rekha Nair, who oversees
the museum and customer experience at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport.
“People think, I just want to get to the gate.”
As a
result, the art is tucked into the hallways, baggage carousels and check-in
counters so as to avoid disrupting the movement of passengers and the nearly
30,000 people who work at the airport. Angelic figures perch above the
elevators. Treelike sculptures stand sentinel over the luggage belts. A mural
accompanies passengers up the escalator after they step off the arrivals bus.
The
most prominent installation is “India Greets,” a 60-foot-high display that
wraps around the center of the terminal. It starts with real doorways and
balconies from around India mounted to the wall, then progresses horizontally
to a series of portraits by Andrew Logan, Robyn Beeche and Anjolie Menon as
passengers walk toward the gates. Once an hour, a life-size white peacock slides
along a wire in front of the works.
But on a recent weekday, few people even noticed the doors
or the flying peacock, which were across from a bookstore and a lounge for
premium passengers.
Among
the few who lingered were three tourists from Britain. “It’s the most beautiful
art I have ever seen in an airport,” said Judith Wolfram, who had lived in
India for seven years as a young woman and had returned for a two-week visit
with her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend. Ms. Wolfram was so impressed by the
airport’s all-India art collection that when their flight was delayed, she
decided to give the younger generation a quick tour of Indian art history.
Sanjay
Reddy, the vice chairman of GVK, the family-led conglomerate that built the
museum and terminal and has managed them since they opened five years ago,
said he knew it would be a challenge to create an art museum in a place where
people are always in transit. But he said he had wanted to do it anyway to
introduce the country’s artistic heritage to Indians.
“Even if we are able to
catch one out of 100 people, we have done our job,” said Mr. Reddy, who hired
the Delhi artist Rajeev Sethi to
select and arrange the works. “A lot of this is subconscious. When you go
through any place, it becomes a part of you.”
Indeed,
art and architecture go together in the terminal, which has 4.7 million square
feet of built-up space, more than double the footprint of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York. The airport’s check-in hall, for example, is covered
by a giant canopy in the shape of a peacock’s tail, with skylights to let in
natural light and small nooks where passengers can sit before going through
security.
Mukeeta
Jhaveri, who lives in Mumbai and advises companies and private collectors on
art purchases and cultural philanthropy, said that the airport’s collection
stood out among both India’s museums and other public art installations at
airports around the world.
“It’s
a heady and kitschy mix of the contemporary, folk, antiquity, tribal, crafts,
you name it,” she said. “Even when I am rushing through the corridors, there is
such a wonderful sense of both discovery and also that of meeting familiar
friends.”
About
25 percent of the passengers that pass through the airport are blue-collar
workers traveling to and from jobs in the Middle East, and the museum very
deliberately sought to include Indian crafts along with contemporary fine art.
More
than 75 women from the slums near the airport, for example, were enlisted to
make a giant, colorful Godhadi quilt, Mr. Reddy said.
The
earthiest work is undoubtedly “Fortress of Clay,” Mr. Sethi’s homage to rural
India. It features animal and human figurines made of mud and cow dung, which
is still used as fuel, construction material and even as insect repellent in
the countryside. Airport staff members periodically reapply the fecal mixture
to keep the figures looking fresh.
Ashok Kumar, a Mumbai bank manager who is originally from the
farm state of Bihar, said he always took a moment to look at that exhibit on
the way to his gate. “It’s the most familiar to me,” he said. “It’s down to
earth.”
By far
the most popular piece, according to museum officials, is “Moving Constant,” a
gilded depiction of Indian gods and goddesses by N. Ramachandran and V. Anamika
that nods to the traditional Tanjore style of painting. Domestic passengers
frequently stop to take selfies in front of the floor-to-ceiling artwork, while
airport workers slip through a door in the corner to visit the employee
restrooms.
Although
a great deal of effort went into putting together the museum, far less has been
put into helping the public enjoy it. Upon passing through security, travelers
are hit with shops and restaurants, with little indication of the art that is
deeper inside the terminal.
Free
tours for passengers can be arranged online, although the “art safaris,”
which last 15 to 45 minutes, need to be booked at least two days in advance.
School groups can also make special arrangements to get through security and
see the collection on the domestic level of the terminal.
“I wish the airport management could find ways to engage the
traffic more,” Ms. Jhaveri, the art adviser, said. “It breaks my heart to see
people rushing by without stopping.”
