LAHORE: The Lahore Arts Council (LAC) has invited fine arts students of all educational institutions to visit the Alhamra Museum at Gaddafi Stadium to engage in a dialogue and interact with gallery curators on the rich art heritage the museum houses.
The council has written a letter to the educational institutions that states that students of fine arts departments should visit Alhamra Museum so that a healthy activity could be generated. Alhamra Museum was earlier called the Permanent Art Gallery.
Lahore Arts Council Executive Director Athar Ali Khan told Dawn that the objective of inviting students to the museum was to give them an opportunity to admire the many paintings, sculptures, prints and ceramics created by maestros as well as the damaged paintings that had now been conserved.
Alhamra Museum housed 205 artworks out of which a number of paintings by leading artists had been damaged. The paintings were conserved under a workshop that involved international curators and local artists. The damaged paintings included two each by Anna Molka Ahmed, Hanif Ramay, Ahmed Pervaiz and Kamil Khan Mumtaz, five by Shakir Ali, an oil-on-board painting by Colin David, some of Saeed Akhtar’s paintings, and one each by Zubaida Agha and Khalid Iqbal.
Two of Ustad Allah Bakhsh’s paintings had been damaged 80 to 90 per cent. The damage to Sadequain’s three paintings was 60 to 70pc. Shemza’s three paintings were damaged up to 50 to 60pc.
Mr Khan also said that the council would soon hold workshops on visual arts at the Alhamra Museum.
