IGNCA on the importance of conservation

From an Army Mess preserving the war trophy of a flag captured in a long-forgotten battle to maintaining a 5,000-year-old Harappan bronze dancing girl in the National Museum, Delhi, conservation comes in many forms. And, among the pioneering institutions involved in conservation in the country is the Indira Gandhi National Centre for The Arts (IGNCA).

The IGNCA focusses on several aspects of conservation — including research, training and re-organisation of museum spaces. It also recently held an exhibition ‘Conserving Values, Restoring Significance.’

The exhibition aimed to showcase the unique conservation work undertaken by the IGNCA, and educate the public about the importance of conservation. Sanjay Dhar, Consultant, Conservation Division, said they wanted to let people know what the department did, and how relevant and important the work was in one’s everyday life.

One wonders why museums have not focussed more on this area. Sources say there are only three full-time conservators at the National Museum, Delhi, to handle three lakh objects. In fact, India only has about 200 trained conservators.

The sheer diversity of the products restored at IGNCA over two decades, and the projects it has dealt with is impressive – the conservation lab was established in 2001. Each conservator works with sculptures, paintings, rock art and textile paintings, including ‘thangkas’, to manuscripts, wood, instruments and bronzes. The IGNCA conservation team has established laboratories in Thailand and Vietnam to help restore manuscripts, and assisted a museum in Guwahati re-organise its collection. The National Crafts Museum in Delhi is an ongoing project too.

Achal Pandya, head of the department, Conservation, shared that, initially, the laboratory was set up only to conserve the collections at IGNCA. Gradually, request calls from the Delhi Police, Supreme Court of India (for documents and mosaics) and the Rashtrapati Bhavan saw it expand its activities. The space in the new IGNCA campus will be approximately 10,000 sq ft, says Pandya.

Reorganisation of museum storage is a satisfying aspect of conservation, says Pandya. Unless one is aware of the contents, it is impossible to clean them, far less showcase them, he says. He spoke of a challenging project in a museum in Guwahati, where 15 of his staff worked for 15 days to reorganise the contents. The Craft Museum, Delhi, is an ongoing project too — initially, only 5,000 objects were relocated; now, 30,000 objects will be dealt with. 

Training to conserve is, of course, important — courses are only available at the National Museum Institute, Delhi, and IGNCA, Delhi. At IGNCA, there have been three batches of the one year post graduate training course, with 20 students in each batch.

Each has a different reason for joining. Rini Hazel Templeton, currently working at the Delhi lab, was interested in restoring the stained glass windows in her local church in Mussoorie — that motivated her to learn more about the subject. “You can make more money authenticating a painting, but the magic of conservation is something else. You restore something to life,” she says.

Conservation is a profession that has developed over the years. It is constantly evolving. Pandya elaborates: “In the late 1920s, Italian conservators who preserved the Ajanta wall paintings under the direction of the Nizam of Hyderabad, used shellac to preserve the paint. In hindsight, this was wrong — the shellac peeled off along with the paint.”

Old manuscripts
being dry-cleaned.
| Photo Credit:
Photo courtesy: IGNCA

Pandya explains: “A fundamental principle of conservation is reversibility. Only a time-tested method should be used. We now know laminating documents is a faulty method, but we used it in India till as late as the year 2000. Fumigation too is an irreversible process, which is harmful for the objects being preserved. So, this is a constantly evolving area, and the more one conserves, the more knowledge one gains.”

In India, the official history of conservation as we know it now, started in Chennai in the 1920s, when a conservation laboratory was established to clean the patina off bronzes, through electrolysis. Today that very patina is considered to add to the worth of the bronze! The wax used to protect the polish also was also, in hindsight, not the perfect type, Pandya explains. “Wax used on paintings darkens it over the decades. Today, we use beva wax, only where it’s appropriate. Only some paintings should be lined. The lining is synthetic and has other repercussions.”

Pandya says there is merit in sometimes not doing anything too. “When I was training in France, some paintings were just left alone. So, waiting to decide is a wise option too. While touching up paintings, the new paint behaves differently from the 18th Century paint. The two paints age differently…, the painting will look badly restored.”

Pandya concludes: “If you don’t respect artefacts, you should not be a conservator. It is not about the aesthetic value of the item; it should be respect for the object itself. The life of a person is about 100 years, while the life of the objects we deal with is much, much longer.”

The Delhi-based reviewer specialises in classical music.