Ajay Piramal Wants to Bring Fine Art to the Masses

NEW YORK — Ajay Piramal, the CEO of the Piramal-Shriram Group, is known for his ventures in an array of industries: health care, financial services, glass manufacturing, and information management, to name a few. However, in addition to all of these businesses, Piramal is also on a mission to make fine arts accessible to the Indian public. 
“If you go to a museum, it’s a very elite thing to do,” Piramal said on Tuesday during a special one-on-one conversation at Asia Society with Asia Society President and CEO Josette Sheeran. “So we decided, let’s make a small effort in that and therefore we opened this museum.” 
The Piramal Museum of Art, which was developed through the company’s philanthropic group, the Piramal Art Foundation, is free to the public. The museum serves as a space that bridges the gap between Mumbai’s private collectors who wanted to make their collections public but lacked the space to do so, and common people who were never exposed to fine art. “We felt that the average person, especially in a city like Mumbai, or even [anywhere] in India, is not exposed too much to art,” Piramal said. “It’s in the business district and people just walk through it. You don’t have to make it a special effort to go to the museum, because a common person will get inhibited [thinking] ‘I can’t go there.’ If there’s a kid from a municipal school — they’re not going to to do that.”
Piramal hopes that his contribution will ignite interest among Indian people of the importance of consuming art. 
“It’s not yet top of the agenda [for others]. That’s why we made this small effort of starting at least a museum,” Piramal said. “I’m glad [to see] that once we’ve started it now I’ve read in the press that there are three other industrialists are starting [their own museum infrastructures] in Mumbai.”
The Piramal Art Foundation was founded in 2014 and is one of the latest philanthropic endeavors of the Piramal family, who also have initiatives concerning women empowerment, clean water access, education, and healthcare. 
Read our full coverage of Ajay Piramal on Asia Blog.
Watch the full President’s Forum discussion above
Video Link – http://asiasociety.org//video/presidents-forum-ajay-piramal-complete?utm_source=asiasociety.org&utm_medium=jwplayer&utm_campaign=video
Source : http://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/video-ajay-piramal-wants-bring-fine-art-masses

About visionsart

Visions Art is a premium gallery for Modern and Contemporary Art. Established in 2001 in Mumbai, advising private and corporate collectors on predominantly Indian Contemporary Art. Since 2003, the gallery opened up its new space in heart of south Mumbai, India. The permanent gallery space is designed as a private art space where both changing and its permanent collections are shown. The gallery’s program draws upon a diverse range of disciplines and intellectual perspectives while maintaining a clear progressive thread. Supporting mid-career and historic figures, as well as launching emerging artists. The gallery represents works by artists who are considered to be at the forefront of Indian contemporary art and is constantly looking to establish a roster of the more progressive artists from India and abroad. Indianartnews.info is a news post blog providing a viewers updates on the latest news and events related to indian art from across the world

View all posts by visionsart →

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.