The dinosaurs come to India

Neville Tuli's bid for iconic Hollywood memorabilia and collectibles just got wilder.

You've got to hand it to him: no one else buys up such interesting things "" in India at least. Like a child searching for treasures in a toyshop, Neville Tuli, chairman of Osian's, flush with funds from a private equity sale, has been on the prowl and looking for things to buy for The Osianama, the institutional archive that's coming up in Mumbai in place of what used to be the cinema exhibition hall Minerva.

And this time he's stretched his hand all the way to Los Angeles where, at the Profile in History LA Auction, he bid for and bagged original screen-used visual effect creatures (models and puppets, mostly) from iconic films such as the Jurassic Park series, Aliens and Batman Returns.

For a total of Rs 1.15 crore, therefore, Osian's will bring to India the T-Rex, Pteranodon and Dilophosaurus from Steven Spielberg's master series, the alien queen maquette from Aliens, and a lifelike Danny DeVito display study of the fascinatingly evil character, Penguin.

In the past, Tuli has been buying magic memorabilia as well as Hollywood collectibles especially from films in the science fiction and horror genres. These include art works from Star Wars, Scream, Spiderman and Planet of the Apes. "No one else in the world has collected as we at Osian's are doing," says Tuli, "and we will contextualise it. When you will see a figure of a werewolf next to a Waheeda Rehman poster from Bees Saal baad, it will establish a continuity between countries and cultures never experienced before."

The creatures from Jurassic Park are made from poly-foam and each is hand painted and mounted on a wooden base. While the alien queen is one-fourth the original size, Penguin is a real-size display stand and was used for the makeup and life cast for Danny DeVito. "The models are actually high quality artworks," says Tuli, who says his systematic collection of these over six years means "these iconic symbols will now be in India forever".

For Tuli, Hollywood science fiction and horror characters are rich with symbolism. "Cinema is a universal art form," he says, "and a great unifying force." The Osianama, slated to open in April-May 2009, "is neither Indian, nor Hollywood, just an imaginative world," says Tuli.

It will have six major sections, and at its centre is a debating chamber where "I want to bring world class debates to India" linked to the exhibitions, shows or publication launches at this repository of popular art. "The focus could be on Japanese samurais one day, on aliens the next," qualifies Tuli, whose heart, clearly, beats for the box office.