Request for Applications: Museum Fellowship | Goa Chitra, Goa (CLOSED)

India Foundation for the Arts
in collaboration with
Goa Chitra

invites applications for

a Museum Fellowship
Application deadline: Saturday, September 15, 2018

This initiative is supported by TATA TRUSTS

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) in collaboration with the cluster of three museums - Goa Chitra, Goa Chakra and Goa Cruti in Goa invites applications for a Museum Fellowship for a period of nine months.

The Archival and Museum Fellowships initiative of IFA began with the two-fold objective of providing practitioners with an opportunity to generate new, critical and creative approaches to public engagement with collections in archives and museums, and to energise these spaces as platforms for discussion and debate.

About the IFA-Goa Chitra Museum Fellowship:
The Fellowship offers creative practitioners a large spectrum of materials to work with from all three museums listed above for a period of nine months. The awardee will be responsible for curating an exhibition and presenting the collection through a series of activities such as talks, workshops and other public programmes during this time. The focus of this fellowship is to engage with local communities.

About the Museums:
The cluster of three museums - Goa Chitra, Goa Chakra and Goa Cruti was founded by Victor Hugo Gomes, who threw open the doors of his first museum, Goa Chitra in 2009. The museums together narrate the history of Goa through objects, texts and oral histories that have been collected from the older members of the community. The museums have invested in several community and outreach programmes that regularly bring in a variety of audiences to the museum through the year.

Goa Chitra is an ethnographic museum that has more than 4,000 artefacts that include agricultural tools, traditional pottery, cane woven objects, religious objects of the Catholic and Hindu faiths, kitchen implements in wood, metal and clay, carpentry tools, traditional distillery tools, fishing tools and implements, coconut oil processing tools, and traditional lamps, among others.

Goa Chakra is a museum dedicated to the 'wheel' and displays many historically significant artefacts related to the wheel, besides a collection of about 70 non-mechanised unique modes of Indian transport, dating from the turn of the 20th century. The collection includes ancient carts and carriages, children’s toys on wheels, dowry chests on wheels, spinning wheels, irrigation wheels, a handloom machine on wheels, chariots, and palanquins from across the country.

Goa Cruti showcases the rich and cosmopolitan nature of the colonial past of Goa through objects dating back to the 16th century. Dispelling the myth that Goans were mainly butlers, cooks, and bakers, a section of this museum is dedicated to the legal and medical history of the region. The collection includes the legal history of Goa as depicted through photographs, books and documents, costumes and jewellery, furniture and crockery, clocks and watches, weapons, musical instruments, traditional games, medical tools, land survey equipment, maps, bottles, decanters, among others.

For more information about the Museums please visit www.goachitra.com or you could also contact Mr Victor Hugo Gomes at goachitra@gmail.com

Applicant profile:
We seek applications from curators, visual artists, historians, researchers and other creative practitioners with prior curatorial experience and a strong interest in research and working with museum collections. We also encourage applicants to think through interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches and methods.

Applicants from Goa will be given preference. Practitioners who are Indian nationals or have been residents of India for five years or more are eligible to apply. To know more about our eligibility criteria please click here

Financial assistance and other support:
The Fellowship provides an honorarium of Rs 2,00,000/- for a duration of nine months. A separate budget will be provided for the outcomes that include the exhibition and public engagement activities.

Important dates:

• The deadline for receiving applications is Saturday, September 15, 2018.
• Shortlisted candidates will be informed by the third week of September 2018.
• Interviews with shortlisted candidates are expected to take place by the end of September 2018.
• The Fellowship will commence from October 01, 2018 for a period of nine months.

Application Process:
Your application must include:

• A brief description of an exhibition and public programmes you could develop from the collections of the three museums. The description should include your vision, approach and possible outcomes that you will pursue. The intention is to give us an idea of how you would like to work with the collections at the three museums.
• A brief note on the public activities you could potentially develop from the collections at the Museums.
• A letter of interest explaining how you would benefit from this Museum Fellowship. Please identify aspects of your practice that you think will be honed and further developed during the course of the Fellowship.
• A brief description of a project you have been involved with as a curator, arts practitioner, or researcher. This description should comprise the vision, approach, processes, and outcomes that have resulted from that project. This will need to be accompanied by the documentation of the project, which should include six to eight scanned or printed images with titles and dates, DVD (maximum duration of four minutes), catalogues, artworks, performance videos, or reviews.
• Your curriculum vitae.

Please email your application or any queries to Suman Gopinath at suman@indiaifa.org and post the required documents to IFA in an envelope marked 'IFA-Goa Chitra Museum Fellowship' by Saturday, September 15, 2018.

Suman Gopinath
'IFA-Goa Chitra Museum Fellowship'
India Foundation for the Arts
'Apurva', Ground Floor
No 259, 4th Cross
Raj Mahal Vilas, 2nd Stage, 2nd Block
Bangalore - 560 094