Celebrating our art

AS YOU enter Mille Fleurs, it stands there to the left. Mounted beside the grand purpleheart wood staircase that takes you up to other exhibition rooms is a painting that speaks to another time and place, another world.

Shastri Maharaj’s Ah Hear de Daughter Run Away (2008) is a minimalist outing. There are three women in its frame. One, in the foreground, looks dejected. In the distance, a pair bend toward one another as though caught in the act of gossip. The landscape is bare. The sky is a dull grey.

It might seem odd to include such a painting in an exhibition designed to engender a sense of patriotism and to celebrate this country’s independence.

But the choice tells us something about the curatorial ideas behind the ongoing series of exhibits that have been put on at Whitehall, Mille Fleurs and Stollmeyer’s Castle to commemorate six decades as a free country.

Clearly, organisers wished to strike as wide a range of notes as possible, blending as many strands of our society together. They also sought to inspire interest in the arts and appreciation of our local cultural resources. It’s a pity they weren’t more open-minded and had, with rare exceptions such as Mr Maharaj’s painting, so narrow a range to draw from.

Nevertheless, the project has been a welcome exercise. Visitors receive two gifts in one. They receive the gift of seeing art from private collections rarely glimpsed. And they enjoy the privilege of being inside historic heritage sites that are rarely open to the public.

But no art is without politics.

The paintings on display, sourced from the collections of the Central Bank, Angostura Ltd and First Citizens Bank, lead one to consider that similar treasures from the National Museum lie somewhere in storage.

Indeed, why is it that, at this point in our history, this show could not have been staged at the museum, which is a stone’s throw away? What is the role of the museum today?

Udecott has announced the museum is to be renovated, but there is room to consider whether the entire institution needs rehabilitation. Its policies, stuffy displays and opening hours have long left a lot to be desired.

While the timeline for the current displays may have been tight, it is a shame advantage was not taken of the national art collection housed at the museum, which is not limited to decorative, postcard-ready paintings, but also includes interesting contemporary work and even sculpture.

There is substantial interest in art in this country, as exemplified by the response to the “street exhibitions” of Jackie Hinkson and the replica of Carlisle Chang’s Inherent Nobility of Man mural at Piarco Airport.

What is still missing though, 60 years after 1962, is a fitting way to share that art permanently with the people.