India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) in collaboration with Goa
Chitra invites applications for a Museum Fellowship. The deadline for the
application is on Saturday, September 15, 2018. This initiative is supported by
TATA TRUSTS.
The Archival and Museum Fellowships
initiative of IFA began with the two-fold objective of providing practitioners
with an opportunity to generate new, critical and creative approaches to public
engagement with collections in archives and museums, and to energise these
spaces as platforms for discussion and debate.
The Fellowship offers creative
practitioners a large spectrum of materials to work with from all three museums
listed above for a period of nine months. The awardee will be responsible for
curating an exhibition and presenting the collection through a series of
activities such as talks, workshops and other public programmes during this
time. The focus of this fellowship is to engage with local communities.
The Museum Fellowship for a period of nine months by IFA is in
collaboration with the cluster of three museums – Goa Chitra, Goa Chakra and
Goa Cruti.
The cluster of three museums – Goa Chitra, Goa Chakra and Goa
Cruti was founded by Victor Hugo Gomes, who threw open the doors of his first
museum, Goa Chitra in 2009. The museums together narrate the history of Goa
through objects, texts and oral histories that have been collected from the
older members of the community. The museums have invested in several community
and outreach programmes that regularly bring in a variety of audiences to the
museum through the year.
“Goa Chitra acknowledges with deep gratitude to the India
Foundation for the Arts IFA and the Tata Trusts for establishing a 9 month
fellowship of 2 lakhs to support curators, artists, historians and researchers
to undertake research using Goa Chitra, Goa Chakra and Goa Cruti’s wealth of
artefacts and the knowledge of its founder. The chosen Fellow will curate an
exhibition and present the collection through talks, workshops and other public
programmes with the primary focus of engaging local communities,” said Goa
Chitra.
Goa Chitra is an ethnographic museum that has more than 4,000
artefacts that include agricultural tools, traditional pottery, cane woven
objects, religious objects of the Catholic and Hindu faiths, kitchen implements
in wood, metal and clay, carpentry tools, traditional distillery tools, fishing
tools and implements, coconut oil processing tools, and traditional lamps,
among others.
Goa Chakra is a museum dedicated to the ‘wheel’ and displays
many historically significant artefacts related to the wheel, besides a
collection of about 70 non-mechanised unique modes of Indian transport, dating
from the turn of the 20th century. The collection includes ancient carts and
carriages, children’s toys on wheels, dowry chests on wheels, spinning wheels,
irrigation wheels, a handloom machine on wheels, chariots, and palanquins from
across the country.
Goa Cruti showcases the rich and cosmopolitan nature of the
colonial past of Goa through objects dating back to the 16th century.
Dispelling the myth that Goans were mainly butlers, cooks, and bakers, a
section of this museum is dedicated to the legal and medical history of the
region. The collection includes the legal history of Goa as depicted through
photographs, books and documents, costumes and jewellery, furniture and
crockery, clocks and watches, weapons, musical instruments, traditional games,
medical tools, land survey equipment, maps, bottles, decanters, among others.
Applicant profile:
We seek applications from curators, visual artists, historians,
researchers and other creative practitioners with prior curatorial experience
and a strong interest in research and working with museum collections. We also
encourage applicants to think through interdisciplinary and collaborative
approaches and methods.
Applicants from Goa will be given preference. Practitioners who
are Indian nationals or have been residents of India for five years or more are
eligible to apply.
Financial assistance and other support:
The Fellowship provides an honorarium of Rs 2,00,000 for a
duration of nine months. A separate budget will be provided for the outcomes
that include the exhibition and public engagement activities.
Important dates:
The deadline for receiving applications is Saturday, September
15, 2018.
Shortlisted candidates will be informed by the third week of
September 2018.
Interviews with shortlisted candidates are expected to take
place by the end of September 2018.
The Fellowship will commence from October 01, 2018 for a period
of nine months.
Application Process:
Your application must include:
A brief description of an exhibition and public programmes you
could develop from the collections of the three museums. The description should
include your vision, approach and possible outcomes that you will pursue. The
intention is to give us an idea of how you would like to work with the
collections at the three museums.
A brief note on the public activities you could potentially
develop from the collections at the Museums.
A letter of interest explaining how you would benefit from this
Museum Fellowship. Please identify aspects of your practice that you think will
be honed and further developed during the course of the Fellowship.
A brief description of a project you have been involved with as
a curator, arts practitioner, or researcher. This description should comprise
the vision, approach, processes, and outcomes that have resulted from that project.
This will need to be accompanied by the documentation of the project, which
should include six to eight scanned or printed images with titles and dates,
DVD (maximum duration of four minutes), catalogues, artworks, performance
videos, or reviews.
Your curriculum vitae.
For
those interested, please email your application or any queries to Suman
Gopinath at suman@indiaifa.org and post the required documents to IFA in an
envelope marked ‘IFA-Goa Chitra Museum Fellowship’ by Saturday, September 15,
2018.
