The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, plans to open an Art of India gallery early next year at a projected cost of $3 million, according to Christine Starkman, MFAH curator of Asian art.
The cost includes expenses for material and construction, purchases of new artwork, and a special commission by visionary artist Anish Kapoor, Starkman said at a recent reception held to discuss a fund-raising campaign.
About 40 guests attended the reception, highlighting the interest of Houston's Indian community in Indian art, which is presented regularly at the museum.
Sushila and Ninan Mathew, members of the MFAH's Asian Art subcommittee, helped organise the event.
Starkman announced that preliminary discussions are underway with Kapoor, who might create a gate or portal for the gallery's entrance.
Kapoor is a British sculptor of Indian origin who frequently visits India, and cites Western and Eastern cultures as influences on his work. In his early pieces, Kapoor used colorful, raw powdered pigment to portray a sense of radiance.
In the 1990s, he moved on to working with stone and, more recently, has incorporated mirror-like elements. His installations have appeared at the Tate Modern in London; the Millennium Dome in London; Millennium Park in Chicago; and the Rockefeller Center in New York, among other locations.
The Arts of India gallery is part of a larger effort to relocate and reinstall the museum's Asian collection on the first floor of the Caroline Wiess Law Building. The Arts of Korea gallery was the first to be completed. Space will also be dedicated to the art of Japan, China, and Southeast Asia, the MFAH said.
The new space will be quadruple the size of the previous galleries, and the MFAH is dedicating additional resources to the acquisition of new works in all areas of Asian art.
Asian art objects at the MFAH cover more than 12,000 years, ranging from a Neolithic Jomon period (10,500 to 300 BC) from Japan, to modern-day works. An expanding collection of works from Asian countries prompted the establishment of permanent Asian galleries in 1997. The dedication to the arts of Asia was solidified in 2000 with Starkman's appointment as curator.
Founded in 1900, the MFAH is the largest art museum in America south of Chicago, west of Washington, DC, and east of Los Angeles.
The encyclopedic collection of the MFAH numbers more than 56,000 works and embraces the art of antiquity to the present.
Featured are the finest artistic examples of the major civilizations of Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa. Italian Renaissance paintings, French Impressionist works, photographs, American and European decorative arts, African and Pre-Columbian gold, American art, and European and American paintings and sculpture from post-1945 are particularly strong holdings, the MFAH release added.
MFAH collections are presented in six locations that make up the institutional complex. Together, these facilities provide a total of 300,000 square feet of space dedicated to the display of art.
