Kishore Singh, Director, Delhi Art Gallery batted for collaborative efforts by stakeholders from within the art fraternity and shared that the conversation to bring individual initiatives on to one platform was already underway. He added that “there were great dialogues and discussions happening “within the art fraternity” and the need was to create more cultural exchanges. He further noted that unfortunately it was happening only with international centres as “those were the bridges they were building.”
He suggested that more was needed to be done within the fraternity, domestically, and shared that the discussion was currently limited to only art fraternity and did not rope in stakeholders from the larger travel and tourism industry.
Kishore Singh suggested that locals in the city did not take pride in their heritage and culture and argued that despite “fantastic art galleries and museums”, people rarely visited them. He illustrated his argument by naming National Gallery of Modern Art and Kiran Nadar Museum – which were “great repositories of art and heritage” and yet there was little traction for them among the local populace. He illustrated his argument by mentioning that while Indians were comfortable queuing up for a considerable period of time to visit “world-famed” art galleries the world-over, such an enthusiasm was missing when it came to celebrating home-grown centres of arts.
He further alleged that Delhi’s locals were “a spoilt lot” and preferred to only talk about the great heritage of the land but stopped short of celebrating them, pointing out the prevalent dichotomy.
He shared that “much was happening around, on a daily basis,” but most of the locals were too entitled to check the listing to figure out what was happening in the city, and “people were themselves to be partially blamed” for the current scenario of the state of art and heritage in the city.
