History

During the late 1980s in Bombay, there was little active interest in the visual arts beyond a tiny elite and no formal institution to spread awareness, create a wider community, and organize discussions of relevant issues and ideas. There were just scattered informal conversations in small groups of artists, critics, and others.

The creation of the MPCVA with the support of a few artist friends and other art world members transformed the situation dramatically as it led to the formation of a fairly large public community interested in talk about art from a variety of viewpoints. When people attended the packed events, they saw and met each other for the first time, and this, along with other forces in the field, helped to crystallize the relatively invisible art world into a very visible community of professionals and amateurs.

Many experts from different parts of the world have lectured at the MPCVA and many people would fly in from other Indian cities to attend its international conferences. The early conferences were seminal in shaping conversations in the visual arts.

Many younger artists and critics matured through this exposure and are now prominent global practitioners themselves. In addition, there are now several new organizations like the MPCVA all over India and even art galleries that offer similar opportunities to a much larger and more vibrant art world.

The MPCVA has played a small but pioneering part in this larger transformation of the Indian art world over the last quarter century.