NYT : An Outpost of the Arts, Secured by a Military Dictator

An Outpost of the Arts, Secured by a Military Dictator

By CARLOTTA GALL | September 26, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 25 — It may be the towering black burqa-clad figures that stand at the entrance, or the brickwork, portholes and curved aluminum skylights of the building itself. Either way, the National Art Gallery, which opened last month, has brought new texture to this otherwise sterile, highly planned capital.

The biggest surprise for most Pakistanis is that the National Art Gallery ever opened at all. It took a marathon 28 years to develop and build, and was a victim of financing shortfalls, bureaucratic inertia and repeated shifts in power under alternate military and civilian governments, which often undid what their predecessors had started.

For the gallery’s architect, Naeem Pasha, 64, it has been a long labor of love for the sake of art and what the building represents for the country.

“An art gallery sends a very strong message to the world that we are creative and peaceful, and I want this to be stronger than the act of a suicide bomber,” Mr. Pasha said as he toured the gallery on a recent morning. “His act is one and we are many, and the so many have to be heard, and that is the message that this gallery must make.”

Sixty years after independence, Pakistan is still struggling with its identity as a state formed for Muslims. Growing Islamic conservatism in Pakistani society and the influence of the mullahs, who generally frown on the figurative arts, have over the years put a brake on the development of art in Pakistan.

“I think we have been self-censoring ourselves,” Mr. Pasha said. “That defeatist attitude has hurt culture.”

In 1973, Pakistan’s first populist prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, agreed to the plan for the National Art Gallery and for a national theater, museum and library in a cultural square at the heart of the new capital, which was built as a planned city in the 1960s. But Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq overthrew Mr. Bhutto’s government in 1977, and the plan was never developed. A religious conservative, General Zia did not promote the arts.

In the early 1990s, after the return of civilian rule, the government of Mr. Bhutto’s daughter, Benazir Bhutto, ran a competition for architectural designs for the gallery. Mr. Pasha’s firm won, but later Ms. Bhutto’s successor, Nawaz Sharif, ordered the prime minister’s secretariat to be built on the site chosen for the national arts projects. The gallery was given a site across town, hidden down a slope in the woods.

After Ms. Bhutto returned to power later in the decade, her minister of culture resurrected the project and gave it its present site on a knoll on Constitution Avenue, overlooking the Parliament and presidency buildings.

“It’s a building of national importance — it should be on the national boulevard,” Mr. Pasha said. Ms. Bhutto laid the foundation stone in 1996. “She wanted to finish it in one year for the 50th anniversary of Pakistan’s independence, but then funds were diverted to the Convention Center,” Mr. Pasha said with a wry smile. Ms. Bhutto was overthrown in 1996, and work on the gallery was suspended.

“I think it was ignorance on the part of the bureaucracy or the legislature as to how important a painting or an artwork is in the life of the people,” he said. “They say Pakistan is a poor country; people cannot eat. But art is the soul of the country.”

The half-built skeleton of the national gallery stood derelict for eight more years until the next military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, moved from his army headquarters to the president’s offices, which look out to the gallery site, in January 2005. “He saw that for three, four, five months that not a single person was working on the building,” Mr. Pasha said. Naeem Tahir, director general of the Pakistan National Council of Arts, recalls the president asking him, “What can you do with this eyesore?”

General Musharraf granted nearly $9 million to finish the building. He opened the gallery last month and toured the exhibitions, which include a large number of irreverent and anti-military pieces, but did not visit a room of nudes by some of Pakistan’s best painters.

The incongruity of a military dictator being the one to have overseen the completion of the project is not lost on either the architect or the administrator. Mr. Tahir said he was just thankful that this general and his family were admirers of art and music.

“We have not yet crossed the line,” Mr. Tahir said. “I think we need another 10 years of dedication to the arts.” He said the president had just agreed to the project for a national theater.

The gallery runs counter to many of the stereotypes of Pakistan’s image today. There is a startling amount of humor and overt sexuality in the exhibits. A pair of suitcases filled with special shower heads for Islamic ablutions, and monumental razors and clippers, poke fun at the needs of the Muslim traveler. Metal sculptures of the female form recall something of the medieval chastity belt. Suspended wooden speakers invite visitors to enter a maze like a pinball machine and batter their heads with the sound of hundreds of madrasa pupils chanting the Koran.

In the museum, natural light pours into immense spaces from skylights and is diffused by high, curving walls.

And in a determined rejection of the concept of purely Islamic architecture, Mr. Pasha has drawn on many influences from Pakistan’s past. He has incorporated balconies and galleries from the Moghul era, a courtyard from Central Asian cultures and, from the British Raj, the use of brick, which he calls a humble material.

“I did not want it to be like the presidency,” Mr. Pasha said in a swipe at the white functionary building across the road. “A people’s building should not be boastful or monumental.”