This is how the website of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, website describes a 16th-century urn in its collection: “Urn with Grotesque Masks/c. 1580/1620/Florentine 16th Century”. Further, in the Artwork History segment, a bullet reads: “A note written by Elise Ferber, dated 10 April 1962 (in NGA curatorial files), indicates that the donor ‘said he was told in Florence that [the vase] was from a drawing by Amato and that [it] came from the Pitti Palace.’ The base was purchased separately ‘at Lannigan’s (sp?)’ but it is not clear from the note whether the vase was actually bought in Florence, or simply discussed with people in that city. It may have been acquired in Paris, where Lewis Einstein lived. (sic)”
Now, here’s how Alison Luchs, the gallery’s 70-year-old deputy head of sculptures, talks about the artefact on Instagram: “Chat, I am about to buss it down Roman Empire style. Haters will say this urn is mid, but they don’t know we have clocked its tea. This GOATed red purple stone called porphyry was yoinked out of a mountain in ancient Egypt, then the Romans snatched it and turned it into a column, and then the Renaissance artists leveled up and turned it into an urn. Unc is mewing. He is looking low-key chopped, but the lion does not concern himself with the opinions of sheep. These grotesque faces were meant to make the owners LMAO. This type of urn was hard to carve, high-key valuable, and the colours of the stone screamed big drip. Between the Renaissance artists, the Romans and ancient Rizzgyptians, this piece represents the ultimate collab over thousands of years.”
It is safe to say that if ever one were to recall information about this urn, it will be Luchs’s riotous definition in Gen Z slang that the brain will dig up. The traditional way — with jargon and complex sentence construction — would have very well gone over one’s head. If nothing at all, the sight of a gray-haired, bespectacled curator spitting out words such as tea, GOAT, yoinked, and rizz will evoke curiosity — about the human civilisation’s past, present, and sometimes even imagined futures. Isn’t that the whole point of art?
This is not to say it isn’t imperative to acquire knowledge the “art history” way. But that is Step 2. The first is getting students/people interested in this often abstract and surreal — even when it addresses very real issues plaguing our lives — world of art. Luchs, after having worked in the gallery for 47 years, decided to embark on this Gen Z adventure to “raise interest in the museum’s art”. It is reflective of the lack of interest in art, even in a country that boasts top-tier institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and The National Gallery of Art. Luchs’s aim evidently was to get through to the young, and for good reason.
In India, the situation seems the same, if not worse. The last AISHE (All India Survey of Higher Education) report 2020-21, released in 2024, noted that India has a total of 43,796 colleges and 11,296 standalone institutions. According to one estimate, only 22 have specialised courses in Art History and Aesthetics. The statistics indicate an unfortunate cycle that discourages young minds, brought up in the marks-oriented Indian education system, to spare a moment for art. Even if a child goes to a museum, he is nudged, often physically, towards history, in isolation from its aesthetics.
But how do you read about Akbar without the Akbarnama — which features a collection of miniature paintings that document the life of the times? One hundred and seventeen miniatures from the folio can today be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. How do you learn about India’s archaeological history without studying the intricate carvings on a palm-sized terracotta bust of a Yakshi that tells the tale of Panchachuda, a fertility goddess worshipped across the Punjab to Bengal belt between 200 BCE and 50 AD?
The total number of museums in India is reportedly around 1,200. The ones dedicated to art can be counted on one’s fingers — National Gallery of Modern Art (Delhi, Bengaluru), Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi, and Museum of Art and Photography, Bengaluru. The problem, however, is not the dearth of art museums but the practice of separating art from other disciplines.
Art is all-pervading, like politics. Nothing in this world is not art. It is the aesthetics of an object, a person, a building, a street, a tree that situate them in a particular moment in time that tells of the evolution of humankind. Without art, everything else is a lesson half-learnt. Luchs, at 77, is attempting to fill the chasm, one reel at a time. And, we are actually obsessed, no cap.
The writer is associate editor, The Indian Express. trisha.mukherjee@expressindia.com
