The Uttara Museum of Contemporary Art (UMCA), located at MDDA Complex in

Dehradun Dehradun () is the capital and the most populous city of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. It is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and is governed by the Dehradun Municipal Corporation, with the Uttarakhand Legislative As ...

, is Uttarakhand’s first art museum dedicating multi-dimensional artworks in the memory of the

2013 North India floods In June 2013, a mid-day cloudburst centered on the North Indian state of Uttarakhand caused devastating floods and landslides, becoming the country's worst natural disaster since the 2004 tsunami. The rainfall received that month was far grea ...

(Kedarnath disaster). The museum exhibits various aspects of the calamity and the folk culture of Uttarakhand through paintings, sculptures, and other artworks by artist Surendra Pal Joshi. It also includes an

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The lon ...

encouraging younger generation of artists to exhibit modern and contemporary art. The museum is located in one of the Earthquake zones of India and is housed in a specially constructed building to withstand high intensity earthquake and extreme weather conditions.

History

The museum was inaugurated on 4 October 2017 by chief minister of Uttarakhand government. The museum has two sections, one for the museum and other for the art gallery. Both the museum and the gallery encompass an area of 408 square metres. The museum was built under the guidance of artist Surendra Pal Joshi who played a major role in embodying the museum. The museum was developed at a cost of ₹1.92 crore by the Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA).

Collections

Contemporary Art

The museum features 50 multi-dimensional artworks of Surendra Pal Joshi constituting the artist’s reflections and responses to the devastation and rescue efforts he had witnessed during his visits to the ravaged mountains in the aftermath of the 2013 North India floods. Selected works File:Paani.jpg, ''Paani'', 2013 File:My Salute.jpg, ''My Salute'', 2016 File:The-Abode-at-Uttara-Museum-of-Contemporary-Art.jpg, ''The Abode'', 2016 File:Ghilda.jpg, ''Ghilda'' 2016 File:Dhol-Damau.jpg, ''Dhol and Damau'' 2016 ;''Paani'' Paani is an installation created with thousands of safety pins that hang on the wall, imitating a cascade of water, in a reimagination of the disaster that killed at least 5,700 people. ;''My Salute'' My Salute is 8 feet long, three and a half feet high sculpture created with over one hundred thousand safety pins, stainless steel, and acrylic sheets. The artwork is a tribute to the helicopters that navigated fog, rain, and treacherous Himalayan terrain to airlift about 23,892 people. The choppers air-dropped 650 tonnes of relief material but didn’t always escape the disaster themselves. One Mi-17 aircraft crashed in bad weather, killing 20 people on board who were all rescuers. The helicopter was a symbol of hope during the Kedarnath tragedy. It speaks of human labour, struggle and continued existence. It took Surendra Pal Joshi about a year to create the helicopter in his Jaipur studio. Joshi visited Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in Bangalore to research how helicopter is manufactured and understand the process to create safety pins of different sizes for their use in the helicopter. ;''The Abode'' The Abode is an installation artwork depicting a double-storied house of Garhwali village that stands half-collapsed. Deodar wood has been used to make the house. The roof is of slate stones which were brought from the villages of Yamunotri for authenticity. A few corn cobs, ready for harvest, hang from the sides of the artwork.

Governance

The Uttara Museum of Contemporary Art was established by the Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA) which is a state-run parastatal. The museum is now administered by Department of Culture, Government of Uttarakhand. In 2019, both MDDA and Department of Culture were criticised for not being able to find an art curator for the gallery along with unresolved maintenance issues of the building.

References

{{reflist Art museums and galleries in India Museums in Uttarakhand 2017 establishments in Uttarakhand Buildings and structures in Dehradun

History

Collections

Contemporary Art

Governance

See also

References