Anupam K Sah

This was the first award that came my way when I was embarking on a professional career in India. I was full of hope and a vision of all I could do for art conservation in India and the award helped me take my first step in that direction without having to wait or lose steam. It reinforced my confidence in myself and in my belief that if there is a worthy idea and sincere effort then there are people to support you. The NTICVA placed faith in all of us awardees especially at that time in our career when we had almost nothing with which to prove how good we were or whether we were any good at all. Having received the award I was deputed to Bhubaneswar to establish an art conservation centre. My responsibilities were to collaborate with the Orissa State Government to establish an art conservation centre and develop it as a centre of excellence for South Asia. The Centre is involved in the conservation of one of the world's most exquisite collections of palm leaf manuscripts from the Orissa State Museum. The centre also conserves a diverse range of art objects. With international support in the period up to 2001, it has trained more than 250 persons from India and other Asian countries in art conservation. It has also been able to influence policy decisions by bringing about positive respones in the State's Government towards their cultural resources. I was awarded the Sanskriti Awarad for Social and Cultural achievement, in 1998 - the first time a national award came down the art conservation path. The fact that the NTICVA award has credibility has no doubt helped other grant making agencies to take our requests a little more seriously. And these other grants in turn have helped us realise our ideas. The wall painting conservation status report (of Biranchi Narain Matha, Buguda) that was prepared due to the NTICVA award, resulted not only in the conservation of that site, but has set the process of conservation of Orissan wall paintings in motion. (Report dated 2000)