On March 4, 2018, for our series Voices on Art, Art This Week Productions filmed this conversation between Baijilal Shivranjani Rajye and the exhibition’s co-curators—Karni Singh Jasol and Mahrukh Tarapor at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
“The daughter of H. H. Maharaja GajSingh II of Marwar-Jodhpur, Baijilal Shivranjani Rajye of Marwar-Jodhpur has played an important and transformational role in her family’s vast and diverse properties that include palaces, forts, museums, and hotels. After India became an independent country in 1947, royal families were eventually stripped of their titles and the “privy purses” offered to them for disbanding their princely states after independence.
Like other royals, Shivranjani’s father had to find ways to offset the costs of maintaining the palaces, forts, jewels, paintings, cars, and airplanes that made up their inheritance. So, inspired by the examples of European royals who had turned their stately homes into hotels and thrown open their magnificent gardens to ticketed tours, Maharaja GajSingh II began the process of transforming Jodhpur’s liabilities into cultural assets.
On opening day of Peacock in the Desert: The Royal Arts of Jodhpur, India, Baijilal Shivranjani Rajye talks with the exhibition’s co-curators—Karni Singh Jasol and Mahrukh Tarapor—about bridging the distance between tradition and modernity to keep the legacy of Jodhpur’s artistic and cultural traditions alive and meaningful for contemporary audiences..”-From the MFAH website
Thanks to Baijilal, Karni, Mahrukh, and the MFAH for allowing us to film the talk.
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