The Museum AND THE MAN

The MAP Museum of Art & Photography, which opened in Bengaluru recently, is a fitting culmination of Abhishek Poddar's lifelong devotion to collecting Indian art

- Radhakrishnan Nair

The finest privately funded museum to come up in India in a generation opened for the public a few weeks ago on Kasturba Road, in the heart of Bengaluru. Housed in a modernist, five-storey steel and glass building, it boasts of five galleries, a café, a rooftop restaurant, with sweeping views of the city, a 130-seat auditorium and a library of Indian art. But what makes MAP stand out from other museums in the country, and perhaps elsewhere in the world, is the all-pervading use of digital technology to enhance the visitor experience. This arguably places MAP among the most technologically advanced museums in the world.

MAP's ever-growing repository of artworks now number more than 60,000, cutting across a variety of genres and disciplines. From contemporary and modern paintings to sculptures, graphics, drawings, textiles, tribal art and film memorabilia, the range is vast. High art and pop culture sit comfortably across the collection. Its massive photography collection is among the largest ever assembled by any museum or gallery in India.

The first thing that strikes you as you enter the museum is the stunning design of the building itself. Designed by the local architecture firm Mathew & Ghosh, it is encased in steel panels, whose facades are embossed with a cross pattern to give the feel of an old-style industrial water tank. The idea was to "bring out the metaphorical connection between the idea of storing something precious: in this case, art." The courtyard leading to the entrance is an art gallery itself housing an imposing collection of stone sculptures of rishis and yoginis in Indian basalt created by well-known British architect, Stephen Cox, who is known for his monolithic works and spends part of the year in Mahabalipuram.