Bengaluru | The Museum of Art and Photography is breaking the white cube

With an edgy five-storey structure and a fine-dining restaurant, will this new Bengaluru address rewrite the museum-going experience?

The Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) is a curious case study of India’s changing relationship with art. Industrialist Abhishek Poddar’s philanthropic initiative to make his formidable collection of art, photography and textiles available to the public took off as a digital platform in 2016. Since then, the museum has launched a series of educational ventures in collaboration with notable international museums like The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, as well as tech giants like Accenture and Microsoft.

Now, in a reversal of the usual offline-to-digital transition that most museums are forced to make, MAP will take physical form in the heart of Bengaluru at a stunning five-storey museum, set to open to the public in mid February 2023. It will include four large galleries, an extensive library, a multimedia gallery, a 130-seat auditorium, a technology centre, a sculpture courtyard, a research and conservation laboratory, a learning centre, a gift store, a café, and a fine-dining restaurant on the terrace. “MAP’s mission is to take art into the heart of the community,” says museum director Kamini Sawhney. “We’re looking at democratising art, and changing the whole museum-going experience for the country.”

The digital life of MAP will continue to stay alive and well even in the physical museum space: for one, an AI-powered hologram of MF Husain, created by MAP Labs in collaboration with Accenture, will greet visitors and answer all manner of questions from, “Why did you like horses?” to “Why did you go barefoot?”

Moreover, a multimedia gallery is fitted with multiple digital screens that allow audiences to pull up any of the nearly 60,000 digitised artworks that MAP is custodian to. This means the entirety of MAP’s collection remains accessible, even when it is not physically on display. “I see the virtual and the physical as two parts of a whole,” admits Sawhney, “I don’t see MAP as being just a physical space… [or] just being a digital platform; we are learning how to combine the two. The idea is to enhance the experience of your audience.”

Bengaluru-based architecture firm Mathew & Ghosh, that designed the museum building, translated the “outward focus” of MAP’s intention into a 44,000 sq.ft. structure that appears to expand outwards — with the footprint expanding on the higher levels. Soumitro Ghosh made a specific reference to colonial-era water containers. “It is a metaphor for how art tends to break boundaries and put pressure on society to question itself and its norms,” he says. “That was kind of translated into this idea of the building itself having an outward pressure.”

The architects have also worked with Diversity and Equal Opportunity Centre to build accessibility into the fabric of the museum. “Besides ramps, we also looked at the positioning of door handles, wheelchair friendly ticket counters, and quiet rooms for people who get over-simulated and need some time to calm down,” explains Sawhney.

The MAP collection is loosely divided into six categories: Pre-modern; Modern and Contemporary; Textiles, Craft and Design; Living Traditions (which is typically understood to include folk and tribal art); Photography; and Popular Culture. “Popular culture is Bollywood posters, calendar art, advertisements, and the like,” explains Sawhney. “All these things, which represent mass culture, are important hooks to draw people in. When they enter the museum, they feel that this is a space that reflects part of their life.”