ARTICLE 1002 - Carrying forward the Art Gallery legacy: Roshini Vadehra

[10th May 2008] MONEY CONTROL

Roshini Vadehra, Director, Vadehra Art Gallery, hopes to be running the finest museum of contemporary art in India in five years. At 25, she is taking forward the legacy of two-decades old Vadehra Art Gallery. After the business of creating art, it’s the business of selling art. That’s exactly what the Vadehra Art Gallery has done for the last two decades. Taking this legacy forward is the 25 year-old Roshini, now the Director of the gallery. An investment banker by training, she wasn’t looking at adopting art but her father seemed to have had other plans. So, at the age of 20 she gave up the capital market for the art market and returned home. “I came back from Boston and was supposed to start a job with one of these banks. But my dad said come to the gallery and spend a couple of hours with me. I still remember it was June 12, and since then I can’t remember missing a day of work.”

Since 1987, the Vadehra Art Gallery has been promoting contemporary Indian art besides exhibition. The Vadehras are also into publishing and have a robust pipeline of books and catalogues. A turning point for Roshini Vadehra was the tie-up between Vadehra and London’s Grosvenor Gallery, a partnership she helped forge. Having learnt on the job, Roshini is keen to demystify through the art to the Foundation of Indian Contemporary art, a non-profit organization. Drawing the focus towards fund-raising, the Foundation conducts workshops, discussions, provides grants and fellowships as well as any emerging artists award to promote Indian artists. “I hope to add one more location to the gallery; I am looking to open a museum at the beginning of 2010 and am going to juxtapose with the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. We have already identified the land and the plans are under way; so that’s going to be my next baby,” she said.

Excerpts from CNBC-TV18 Shreen Bhan’s exclusive interview with Roshini Vadehra:

Q: It’s a very different field from investment banking where you actually got some training while you were studying in Boston. Even though you have grown up watching your father and a whole host of artists get together and talk about art, what were the initial months for you on the job like? How much of your dad did you follow around to get a sense of what the business was about?

A: For the first six months, I didn’t see the outside of my dad’s office. He literally sat me down on a couch next to him and put about 40 books next to me. He said read as you can’t go out and talk to people till you know what you are talking about.

Q: What was the first big break for you when you felt that you had actually found your own voice and feet in the business?

A: One day, there was no one at the gallery. It was 6:30 pm and a collector walked in. This is someone who has been buying from my dad for 10-15 years. She said, ‘I have come to see some art, show me something.’ Now, being Vadehra’s daughter, I couldn’t say that I have never done this before, so I don’t know what to show you. So, I walked in to the stock room and spoke to couple of boys who usually take out the art to show these clients and asked them what should I show. They took out a couple of pieces. I just chatted with them and was this sweet young girl. The client said fine, and asked me to send the invoice.

Q: When you started off you were just 21 years. Was it difficult for you to get people to start taking you seriously despite having the Vadehra family legacy and all of that?

A: People still treat me like a young girl. But the legacy of the Vadehra Art Gallery makes it harder due to the expectations. In some sense, people give you a look that you just had it way too easy. So, it did take me a couple of years to prove my own ability to be able to fit into this community.

Q: When you talk about art, you usually think of the cocktail circuit and people swishing around clinking champagne glasses in art galleries. That is very remote from what the reality is, isn’t it?

A: Yes, absolutely. It’s not all as glamorous as they show in Page 3.

Q: But a lot of it is part of the page 3 culture because you are addressing that market aren’t you?

A: Our gallery has made it a point to stay a little removed from that circuit, but it is almost a necessary evil. You can’t do without it completely and you do have that one cocktail a month when you open a new exhibition. But apart from that, there is a lot of hard work and sweat that goes into it.

Q: In 2007, we saw the kind of buzz that we had seen about Indian Art petering out and there was also a sense that probably a correction is going to set in and valuations are going to be a lot more realistic in 2008. What is the art market looking like?

A: If it’s a good artist and a good work, then no correction in the market can affect it. What we saw at the end of 2007 was a lot of the not so good art piggy backing on the entire boom of the Indian art market. That started falling off and that’s always for the good. People were more educated and you couldn’t just sell anything for two years. All of us had a blast. We sold everything that came our way; galleries, artists and collectors were happy.

Q: What is the big trend for 2008 in your mind?

A: I see a lot of young and contemporary art selling and that is a trend all over the world.

Q: Are there any Indian names that we should be watching out for?

A: The names you read about all the time: Atul Dodiya, Meetu Sen or Anju Dodiya. These are the ones that you read about almost every day and they are getting prices as much as the senior artists today. But every new collector also wants that one Hussain or Raza collection. So, in some sense everyone is going to do well.

Q: Your job entails a lot of traveling because you have to go out and see the international trends are look for talent internationally, come back and put that together in India.

A: The travel is increasing almost every day. We have art fairs all over the world now. We have a partnership in London, so we have exhibitions there.

Q: You were instrumental in putting that partnership, which happened in 2006?

A: We did that in 2006. We started that with a Picasso exhibition that we did in Delhi. That got a lot of attention from the country and we had truckloads of people walking in to see Picasso’s work for sale and it never happened before in India.

Q: You have a gallery in collaboration with Grosvenor Gallery in London. How has that experience been like for you?

A: It’s actually amazing to have a physical existence in another country. It is very important and apart from getting new collectors and all, it is getting very important for cultivating your own artists and to show them internationally, especially today when there is so much international interest in Indian art.

Article Courtesy: MONEY CONTROL