A first for india: a museum of contemporary art

Anupam Poddar had a life room once. These days the sofa is shoved into a corner, and the rest of the big square space is taken up by a life-size model of an old-timer cream-colored panther with a giant mechanical dinosaur climb it from buttocks. On the dining table sits a row of finely delicate sculptures made of human bone and red velvet. A video installing has found a home above a bath tub.

For Poddar, 34, buying art long ago stopped being a inquiry of what to hang on which wall. Installations, many of them large and provocative, squeezed themselves into each room, across the garden, in the drive and in every toilet.

"It just took over my life. I had to throw out most of my piece of furniture," Poddar confessed. "It became an compulsion. The term hobby is too tame. It about controls you."

The buck private obsession Poddar shares with his female parent, Lekha, who lives down the stairs, is about to become a populace boon. What they have collected separately and jointly over the last 30 years will be exhibited in a new space in the suburbia of Gurgaon, what will be, in consequence, India's first coeval art museum.

Spread over two flooring and about 700 square meters, or 7,500 square feet, in an business office tower, the Devi Art Foundation, as it is called, is due to open on Sabbatum, with an inaugural address show of picture taking and video called "Still Moving Image." It characteristic the work of 25 creative person, a fraction of the approximately 2,000 contemporary pieces that make up Poddar's aggregation, along with an estimated 5,000 folk and tribal pieces, which are his female parent's passionateness.

India is bursting with commercial message art galleries, but Devi is poised to be what the Poddars' home has been for many years: a noncommercial, nonprofit exhibition space for contemporary art from India and the subcontinent. Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary Indian art at Christie's auction house in London, described it as "a truly groundbreaking first for India."

In a way, Devi is the natural next step for a country awash in new wealth, soaring art prices and a prolific crop of artists and collectors.

A modern art museum is also under way in the eastern city of Calcutta. Herzog & de Meuron, the Swiss architecture firm that built the Tate Modern in London, is designing it. Construction is to start next year, and the museum is to open in late 2013, said Rakhi Sarkar, a collector there and one of the driving forces behind the museum.

To be sure, there have always been art collectors in India, from erstwhile royalty to the old Indian business families like the Poddars. But the last decade of economic growth has thrust many new buyers into the art market, spurred on by art funds that invest in paintings, and in turn sent prices shooting up almost overnight.

All the while, a handful of wealthy Indians have been collecting with serious, singular purpose. Harsh Goenka, who heads a family-owned conglomerate based in Mumbai, has a special fondness for portraits. Priti and Priya Paul, sisters who run the Apeejay Group of businesses, have built on their family's collections: Priti's passion is video art, while Priya's is popular art like old calendars, advertisements and film memorabilia.

The birth of the Devi Art Foundation signals a sort of turning point in the Indian art scene, in that it opens up a private family trove to the public and is devoted entirely to contemporary art.

The Poddars are known in the art world here for their daring eye, for seeking out artists before they start fetching high prices or become recognizable names at fashionable Delhi dinner parties. Poddar scouts art college graduations for new talent, though it must be said that many of the artists he sought out years ago, like Subodh Gupta and Sudarshan Shetty, are now among the most recognizable names at those fashionable parties.

"While most collectors in India still 'buy with their ears,"' said Peter Nagy, a transplanted New Yorker who runs the Nature Morte gallery here, "the Poddars have always listened to their hearts and brains and have never been afraid to be independent in their choices."

Poddar, whose day job is running an upscale hotel company, admits to being inspired by his mother, who began collecting modern and folk art several decades ago. Except that the work his mother sought out, including pieces by the post-Indian-independence generation of artists known as the Progressives, did not resonate with the son. He gravitated toward artists of his own generation.