JOIN USHere's what inside Air India's art collection
With a winning bid of Rs 18,000 crore, the Tata Group has finally got Air India Ltd. back, marking the biggest disinvestment event in the country.
But even though the Tata Group has got back what was theirs, the ‘Maharajah’ won’t be returning home entirely.
Air India's invaluable art collection is in the process of being transferred to the Ministry of Culture. It is likely to be displayed at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) after the airline's sale to the Tata group recently, NGMA Director General Adwaita Gadanayak told PTI.
So, what is there in the Air India art collection?
Air India’s art collection, also known as the ‘Maharajah collection’, consists of over 4,000 artwork from legendary artists such as M F Husain, Anjolie Ela Menon, Jatin Das, S H Raza, V S Gaitonde, and K A Ara.
The Maharajah collection was put on display across all the Air India offices in the world. They also had calenders, postcards, menu cards, and coasters featuring them.
Besides the traditional handicrafts, paintings, textiles, and sculptures, the company also had posters and ads by cartoonist Mario Miranda and The New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno.
It also had stone sculptures dating back to the ninth century and a collection of exquisite clocks. The clock collection includes a mantle clock in an ebonised break-arch wood case which is said to have been made in London in 1845.
How much is it worth?
There is no official statement that mentions the worth of the entire collection which was built over a time period of more than six decades post-independence.
In 1956, Air India bought its first set of six paintings for Rs 87.50. Most of the other paintings were bought for Rs 50 to Rs 500 over the course of time. Many of the artwork were also commissioned by the airlines and JRD Tata bartered the rest for air tickets.
As the artworks were not opened for decades, some of them were lost or damaged. In 2017 it was found that Jatin Das’s 1991 oil painting-- Flying Apsara-- was sold in the open market for Rs 25 lakh by a former employee of the company.
What is its uniqueness?
In a conversation with The Indian Express, Mumbai-based art historian and conservation architect Meera Dass, who is working on a book about the archive, said, “The airline always had the culture of being representative of the nation… The collection served that purpose — to present India as an ancient civilisation, but with a modern outlook.”
Apart from being antique and diverse, JRD Tata’s philosophy of “putting a little bit of India” makes the Air India art collection unique. His collection featured on the walls of Tata’s offices in New York, Washington, Perth, Rome, Tokyo, Paris, and London to showcase the rich Indian culture.
(With agency inputs.)
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