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India's national carrier Air India has now gone back to the Tata Group. But the move has also raised questions about what will happen to the airline's various assets.
One priceless asset is Air India's beautiful art collection which is worth millions of dollars. According to The Indian Express, the Maharaja Collection has more than 4,000 works, including those by some of India's most famous artists such as M.F. Hussain, V.S. Gaitonde, Jatin Das and Anjolie Ela Menon.
The Air India offices, calendars, menu cards and posters proudly displayed pieces from this collection, which also includes posters that noted Indian cartoonist Mario Miranda made and ads that The New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno designed.
Traditional wooden and bronze artwork, paintings, sculptures and textiles are also part of the expansive collection.
There is no official estimate about the worth of the collection but it is notable that the collection expanded alongside the airline.
The first set of six paintings was purchased from art school graduate B. Prabha in 1956 for Rs87.50 ($1.57) and since then the collection was carefully put together. It was expanded with the aim of "putting a little bit of India" in the then Tata Airlines' booking offices, according to the philosophy of its founder J.R.D. Tata.
Mumbai-based art historian and conservation architect Meera Dass, who is working on a book about the archive, said: "The airline always had the culture of being representative of the nation. The collection served that purpose - to present India as an ancient civilisation, but with a modern outlook."
Later, with computerised booking taking hold, some of Air India's international booking offices were shut and the artworks were either sent back to Mumbai or stored elsewhere.
The works haven't been opened for decades and it is believed that some of the pieces have been damaged, lost or stolen.
Artist Das found out in 2017 that Flying Apsara, the painting he made in 1991 and which had been acquired by the airline, was up for sale for Rs25 lakh ($450,000) in the open market. This led to a complaint against a former Air India executive for stealing government property. Subsequently, it was reported that the airline was "examining how many more former or serving Air India officials could be in possession of such paintings".
Just before the pandemic last year, Air India held a four-day exhibition in Mumbai with 7,000 artefacts and memorabilia.
A report said that since 2016, serious efforts have been made to create a detailed inventory of the pieces included in the collection, some of which are lying in erstwhile Air India offices in New York, Washington, Perth, Rome, Tokyo, Paris and London.
India's ministries of Civil Aviation and Culture are working out an agreement to transfer the collection to New Delhi and display it at a prominent museum.
"Even though the nation couldn't afford the airline, we can surely create a dedicated museum to display this landmark collection, which unravels the India story, slice by slice," Ms Dass said.
Indo-Asian News Service
