Birla Academy of Art and Culture: Fifth Art Access Week

Mumbai: The Birla Academy of Art and Culture's Fifth Art Access Week is to be held from 26th August through 2nd September, 2001 at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Prabhadevi, Mumbai.

The Art Access Week, the brainchild of Mr Kumar Mangalam Birla, the Academy's Chairman, has been premised on his vision of making art accessible to all collectors, and in so doing reaching art to a larger section of society.

Says Mrs Neerja Birla who will inaugurate the show on Sunday, the 26th August, at 10.00 a.m. "Art Access Week began five years ago as a somewhat unusual experiment. We invited artists from among the senior and established to the young and yet to be known, to come up with aesthetically appealing and reasonably priced works. Our endeavour was to prove that a cross-section of artists if seriously committed to their work could share a common platform".

She added that "the effort was a great success among artists and collectors, especially unknown artists in need of a platform and young buyers, intimidated by high prices and the egregiousness of art purchase. Importantly, the exhibition brought to the fore-uncelebrated talented artists whose works were now acquired for their own merit. This success has prompted us to make Art Access Week an annual event."

Art Access Week has offered more people the possibility of acquiring an original work of art at a reasonable price and through flexible installment schemes. Infact, the success of the effort became a trendsetter.

The fifth Art Access Week will continue to be a celebration that commemorates pure aesthetics as it mirrors a wide range of creative expressions. It will be all about aesthetics, acquisition convenience and unabashed gratification from artists and collectors, says Niyatee Shinde, Director and Curator, Birla Academy of Art and Culture.

Among the artists whose works will be on the show are Sudhir Patwardhan, Sunil Das, Laloo Prasad Shaw, Lalita Lajmi, Yusuf Arakal.

The exhibition will be open from 10.00 a.m. to 9.00 p.m. all through the week.

Up until now, all the earlier four Art Access Weeks held have met with overwhelmingly positive response. These showcased the works of Rajan Fulari, C Reghu, Thota Tharani, Devilal Patidar, Chandra Bhattacharya, Ganesh Basu, Shail Choyal, P N Choyal, Pompa Panwar, Abbas Batliwala, Manjit Bawa, Suhas Roy, Fatima Ahmed, S G Vasudev, Vrindavan Solanki, Krishen Khanna, Prafulla Dahanukar Gurucharan Singh, Lalitha Lajmi, Madhukar Munde, Ravi Mandlik, Riaz Komu, Chintan Upadhyay, Brinda Miller, Papri Bose, etc.