March 11, 2007	Sunday	Safar 21, 1428

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ISLAMABAD, March 10: Almost 30 years after its conception, the National Art Gallery (NAG) is ready to house a collection of the art on permanent basis for public viewing.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf is expected to inaugurate the gallery on March 20.

Built at a cost of Rs456 million, and over 18,000 square yards, NAG has 13 galleries, a library, 450-seat auditorium, a restoration laboratory, art studios and a children’s section.

Works of the present and past artistes would be on display, with a section devoted to portraits, sketches and sculptures of national heroes as “visual history” for the students.

But it seems the long and dark shadow of the late Gen Ziaul Haq who conceived the National Art Gallery (NAG) project on April 5, 1978 looms large on the new “palace of arts”.

Just weeks before the NAG’s opening, the keepers of nation’s morals thought the works of art needed to be scrutinised for the emotions they could arouse before being put up on display.

An eight-member committee appointed by the Ministry of Culture is now at the job — to stop art works that could “hurt the sensitivities of the people or their religious sentiments” making way to the NAG exhibition halls.

Officials of the ministry and the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA), however, did not agree the exercise amounted to “censorship”, or even “partial censorship”.

For curators and sensitive artists the scrutiny was nothing but “unhealthy self-censorship mirroring the retrogressive mindset of the bureaucracy”.

They feel that art connoisseurs will find “some of the great works of art challenging socio-cultural taboos, and rebellious in nature, missing from the national exhibition”.

Curators had started collecting works for the national gala more than 10 months ago. The committee, headed by PNCA director-general, Naeem Tahir, was appointed only last week to “filter” the art works what they consider ‘sensitive’.

“Yes we are entitled to keep public sentiments in view while displaying any work. In this process we can also leave out some sensitive works,” artist Jamal Shah, who is a member of the review committee, told Dawn.

Ironically, the informal censorship is not restricted to nude or naked art but is going to hit works depicting the tricky issues of the clash of civilisation, the horrible impacts of the policies of the West and the US on Muslims after the 9/11 and anything that is considered “too unconventional”, sources in the Ministry of Culture confided to Dawn.

There seems to be a radical shift in the government’s policy of promoting liberal art, raising fears of the return of Zia days when iconoclastic and rebellious artists suffered and even private galleries did not dare to display such works.

Today, the government has to guard additionally against the art that paints the US and the West black.

Asked who would decide which art was sensitive and which one not, Jamal Shah said: “One cannot represent the feelings of all the viewers but there is always some understanding on what could be sensitive”.

Curators are said to have warned the committee that its selection process could qualify some works of well-known artists like Collin David and Saleema Hashmi to be labelled as sensuous.

In fact the committee’s meeting last Monday was devoted to discussing the angels at which the statues by Saleema Hashmi should be displayed to minimise their “provocative appeal”.

The committee is viewing all the works to spot the ones which “can shock the common man or can invite the anger of religious extremists when shown on private TV channels or reported in the press”.

The question agitating the artists community is who can decide, and how, what display would be shocking to a visitor?

Dawn has learnt that the Ministry of Culture decided on the scrutiny after the PNCA informed it that some unconventional works, challenging the cultural norms had arrived for display at the National Art Gallery and sought its advice.

“We neither want to shock the people nor put them to sleep,” said Saleema Hashmi.

Ms Hashmi, a former principal of the National College of Arts and a curator at the National Art Gallery, said she had been told that the committee had been formed to ensure that “the best art from around the country” find a home.

She said there were two different types of artists: the ones who did art only to sell it to buyers and the ones who worked against the taboos in order to open up a dialogue. She said no one can set standards for art.

Ms Hashmi said the display of nude was not the problem of Pakistan but the violence against women, social injustice and the lack of freedom of speech. “Pakistani artists depict their responses to the conditions that surrounded them in different forms of art,” she said.

The country is getting a grand building in the form of the National Art Gallery to which the artist community has attached great expectations, she said.

All curators of the NAG agree on what should be displayed that could not shock the visitors. “But, this does not mean that there should be censorship to satisfy the wishes of the Mullahs”.

“You cannot organise an exhibition to highlight the problems of Palestinians at any gallery in New York,” Ms Hashmi said. Censorship in different forms was practised in almost every society even today, she added.

Renowned painter and former director-general of PNCA Ghulam Rasool said the review committee was formed after he drew the attention of the minister for culture to the appointment of curators only from Lahore and Karachi. He feared that some best works from other parts of the country, even Islamabad, might not make it to the National Gallery.

Liberal art did not mean nakedness, he said, adding that even in the US display of naked work was not allowed. Pornography was a form of naked art.

Nude art, on the other hand, depicted expression through human body and was not banned formally in Pakistan. Even in the Pakistani national art collection dating back to the days of Zia, there were a few pieces like the use of art as design by Collin David of Lahore depicting nude Jesus Christ with only some cloth on sensitive parts of the body.

“Collin David did not want to offend Muslims or Christians or play with their sentiments,” Ghulam Rasool said.