Art after hours

To serve art aficionados (and buyers) with a busy work week, 10 galleries clustered in Colaba and Fort have decided to experiment with extended hours and special events.

Perhaps no other place in the country has so many art galleries within a 1-km radius as Colaba in downtown Mumbai does. Aiming to capitalise on their proximity, therefore, 10 local gallery owners (so far) have come together to form what they call an “art district” in Colaba and Fort. They are reinforcing the idea with two initiatives, which they are calling Art 4 Sunday and Late Thursday.

Under Art 4 Sunday, all the participating galleries will stay open from 11 am to 5 pm on the fourth Sunday of every month. And for Late Thursday, they will remain open until 9 pm on the second Thursday of the month.

Strictly speaking, these initiatives are not new. They debuted about a year and a half ago. The idea did catch on, but then fizzled out and was dropped as a one-off experiment when no one (read, gallery owners) took it seriously enough. With the art market continuing to look pretty grim since the economic downturn in 2009, like-minded gallery owners decided to revive this “art district” initiative.

The galleries involved are Chatterjee & Lal, Chemould Prescott Road, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Gallery Beyond, Gallery Maskara, The Guild Art Gallery, Lakeeren, Mumbai Art Room, Project 88 and Sakshi Gallery.

“There have been lot of complaints from art lovers in recent times about the gallery being closed on Sundays,” says Geetha Mehra, director of Sakshi Gallery. “So, we decided to be a part of this initiative. In India,” she adds in explanation, “we’re not reaching out to enough people. We’re not getting more people to engage with art. So we can’t blame people for knowing only about Bollywood films and nothing about the art scene in Mumbai. I hope this step we’ve taken will gradually change that.”

Keeping the galleries open on Sundays will accommodate those working professionals who are interested in art. It may also encourage students and children to pay a visit. On the other hand, Late Thursday means that working people can visit art galleries after office hours.

Since the galleries are all within walking distance of each other, viewers will be able to travel easily between galleries so as to take in several shows.

On these extended-hours days, gallery owners, and sometimes even the artists whose shows are on, will be present and ready to interact with visitors. Lectures and documentary screenings are being considered. The aim is to make the gallery-going experience more educational and entertaining and to get a chance to better explain the works and shows.

To attract more buyers, Usha Mirchandani, owner of Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, has also reduced the prices of the art that she is displaying. “Earlier, people just bought a work if they liked it, regardless of the price,” she says. “Now they’ve become choosy. They’ve realised that in the past they might have paid too high a price for certain things. That’s why I’ve decided to look for new talents and sell their work at a lower price. It makes a lot of business sense to me.”

Mirchandani says the first Art 4 Sunday on July 24 had a good response. “There was someone from Kerala who liked a work so much,” she says, “and with the price as low as Rs 2.5 lakh, she couldn’t resist buying it.”

The next Art 4 Sunday is scheduled for August 28