Siddhartha is the Director of Education and Civic Engagement and Curator of South Asian Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, USA. He curates exhibitions and focuses on community engagement.

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Siddhartha Shah

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 SIDDHARTHA V. SHAH
 is the Director of Education and Civic Engagement and Curator of South Asian
 Art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, USA. As a curator,
 he develops exhibitions that tell the stories of the artists, communities,
 and traditions of South Asia, as well as important moments in the history of
 the region, and what they reveal about nation-building and self-discovery.
 In his role as Director of Education and Civic Engagement, he strives to
 create alignment and synergy between the museum’s education and curatorial
 departments while focusing on community engagement and impactful
 programming. In part 2 of this interview, he speaks with
 VANESSA PATEL
 from the Heartfulness Institute about Yoga, meditation, art, and growing
 up.
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 Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Kathy Tarantola
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 Q: So, Siddhartha, you’re also a Yoga practitioner and meditator, and you
 have spoken about psychospiritual wellness. Can you share a little bit about
 how you have incorporated this into your work?



 SS: I have been a
 pretty rigorous Yoga practitioner for twenty years, but I have basically
 stopped in the past year. Part of it was because of physical restrictions – I
 didn’t have a teacher here because of the pandemic, and I kept doing something
 wrong that was hurting my hip. No one was there to correct it, so even if I
 tried to do something simple, the next day I had pain.



 I also felt that I was too addicted to it. I understand that doing Yoga means
 I have a better day, but it got to the point where I could not have a good day
 if I did not do Yoga. That’s when I realized, “My relationship to this is not
 healthy.” But that’s also part of the practice – knowing when to tell myself
 that I need a break, because this is not doing what I need.



 Regarding meditation, it so happened that the week after lockdown started in
 March 2020, I started a meditation challenge for our staff. I said, “Okay
 everybody, the universe is telling us to go inside, so that’s what we are
 going to do.” For ten days I sent videos to them – just ten minutes of
 meditation each day for ten days. More than 70 people signed up, and some
 people said they wanted to keep going. So I said, “We’ll do a 21-day
 challenge,” and 40 people signed up for that. Since then, we do meditation
 every Monday morning before the work week starts, and every Friday afternoon
 at the end of the work week. It is open to anybody who wants to drop in, so I
 always have my Google Meet open. Sometimes nobody is there and I still attend,
 leaving my camera on, and I sit for twenty minutes. Other times, people come
 and join. It is just a service I now offer to staff.



 Q: I appreciate the sense that there are no expectations, no demands. If
 you feel the connection, the room is open. To me, that feels like true
 service, because there are no expectations in the intention behind your
 gesture.



 You’ve given me a 360-degree glimpse into your work world, although I’m
 sure there is a lot more that you are involved in. I know you started as a
 gallerist so I would love to know more about your journey, and the struggles
 you faced. Do you feel you are now in your dream job?



 SS: When I was
 younger, my dream job was to be an art dealer. I did that and thought, “Okay,
 now I have my dream, but I am not done. Now what do I do?” That dream career
 ended years ago. I would say the struggle was mostly internal, but there were
 some external challenges. It was a different path than a lot of South Asians
 in the United States. My father and brother are both physicians. Most of the
 Indians we knew were either physicians or engineers, and that just wasn’t the
 path for me. I always felt supported by my parents, but there were a lot of
 questions like, “What do you do?”, “What do you study?”, and “What are you
 going to do with that?”


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 Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Bob Packert
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 </figure>
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 There was one pivotal moment around the age of 25, when I was a manager of a
 gallery in California. I was really unhappy in my job. I called my dad,
 crying on the phone, and said to him, “I don’t know what to do.” He said
 to me, “I don’t know your field of study. If you were a physician I could
 guide you, but you made this choice for yourself and I can’t help you here.
 You need to decide what you are going to do.” And that was so empowering
 for me. I realized he was right – “I chose this path, and I am going to figure
 this out.” That was a moment of real empowerment.



 I have had many different careers, and my path has unfolded because I said yes
 to the right opportunities. I have never had a vision of where I am ultimately
 going to be. I never decided that museums were where I wanted to be. It just
 felt right, and I said yes to the opportunity. That happened with the Ph.D. as
 well. I had never formally studied Indian art, and I only wanted to study with
 one professor, Dr. Vidya Dehejia. So I applied to the program, and thought,
 “If she takes me, I’ll go, and if she doesn’t, I’ll continue here.” She took
 me on, and my whole life changed. Suddenly I was a student again at 35.
 Everyone else was in their early twenties!



 Q: And how has your experience been in the curatorial world of art
 galleries and museums, amongst that community of people?



 SS: It’s been
 different every time I have curated something, because it depends so much on
 what you’re working with. Here at PEM, curating has been such a joy because I
 get to work with an outrageously rich collection. It’s great fun. It’s the
 largest collection of modern Indian art outside India, and certainly one of
 the most important collections of modern Indian art in the world.


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 I have had many different careers, and my path has unfolded because I
 said yes to the right opportunities.
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 <img
 decoding="async"
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 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/art_as_social_responsibility4_924812ecc5.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-10T05:42:45.809Z"
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 <figcaption>
 Gulam Rasul Santosh 1929 – 1997, India Untitled, 1973 Oil
 on canvas Gift of the Chester and Davida Herwitz Collection, 2001 E301212 Courtesy
 of the Peabody Essex Museum
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 </figure>
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 If I were curating it in India, I would do it in a different way, but I have
 to curate for an American audience that is not in a major city. So, how to
 talk about Indian masterpieces by a collection of artists that most people
 have never heard of here? The challenge is to frame it in a narrative that the
 public is going to understand. I speak in very general terms, so that the
 story of India replicates the story of America. For example, there is a
 version of the Ramayana that, depending on how you enunciate it, is both the
 Ramayana and the Mahabharata. It’s a Pallava-era poem by the author Dandin.
 The work has been lost, but apparently it composed a version of two different
 epics with the exact same text. This is how I speak about India’s diversity,
 and unity in diversity. Part of what makes India so unique are the different
 types of people there, but, like America, the biggest challenge to harmony has
 been the country’s diversity. I speak about it in these ways, and it is great
 fun, as you can apply the concept to India and America.



 Q: That is a great way to make it relatable. Ultimately, art is something
 that needs to be relatable because, as you said, so many people feel it is
 beyond them. You have made it really accessible and activated it in so many
 ways for your community. Thank you so much, Siddhartha.



 SS: Thank you,
 and I hope to see you here at the museum.


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Art as social responsibility

<h4>
 SIDDHARTHA V. SHAH
 is the Director of Education and Civic Engagement and Curator of South Asian
 Art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, USA. As a curator,
 he develops exhibitions that tell the stories of the artists, communities,
 and traditions of South Asia, as well as important moments in the history of
 the region, and what they reveal about nation-building and self-discovery.
 He strives to create alignment and synergy between the museum’s education
 and curatorial departments while focusing on community engagement and
 impactful programming. Here, he speaks with
 VANESSA PATEL
 from the Heartfulness Institute.
</h4>

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 Q: Hello Siddhartha. Thank you for your time. You have been
 extremely busy
 with various projects. Can you tell us about one in particular – your role
 on the Board of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect?



 SS: About ten
 years ago, I became close with clients who were involved with the Anne Frank
 Center. I told them that I had read Anne Frank’s diary three or four times,
 and it really impacted me. Then, I went to college in Amsterdam for a
 semester, right across the river from the Anne Frank house, so I have always
 felt a connection to her. They invited me onto the Board because they saw that
 I was deeply committed to human and civil rights. Anne Frank’s experience does
 not apply to the Jewish community alone; it is relevant to different kinds of
 struggles around the world, such as LGBTQ issues, with which I identify, and
 race, here in the United States and elsewhere. I got involved with the Anne
 Frank Center through this alignment of vision. My goal is to make sure that
 Anne Frank’s story reaches as broad an audience as possible.


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 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/art_service_community1_700x303_afbb166f97.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T11:23:35.291Z" />
 <figcaption>
 Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. Photography by Bob Packert
 </figcaption>
 </figure>
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 Q: You have also developed a program for nurses to strengthen
 their
 observation and communication skills, using art to reduce anxiety and
 stress. Nurses and caregivers seem to be the forgotten people, and the
 impact on their mental health isn’t often addressed. How have you used the
 medium of art?



 SS: We take
 nurses through the South Asian galleries at Peabody Essex Museum, and we have
 them look at certain paintings. Then we talk about what they see. We also help
 them see what they don’t see. If you look deeper into paintings, there are
 things you may not notice. Then we ask, “How does this relate to your work?”
 “When you’re taking a diagnosis, what is the information you’re collecting?”
 We help them assess what they see and apply that to their relationships with
 their patients. In terms of the mindfulness piece, as you said, nurses and
 caregivers are forgotten, and we don’t think about the amount of stress
 they’re under, particularly during the pandemic.



 We have them look at two paintings by Ghulam Rasool Santosh, which are very
 simple geometric images with simple colors. They slow down and allow their
 eyes to wander over and across the paintings, noticing what associations they
 have. One of the paintings is predominantly black and one is predominantly
 white. At the black painting, we ask them to think about what associations
 they have with the color black; then we ask them to think about the same with
 the white. We tend to think of black as dark and negative, and white as
 positive, so I ask, “Can black feel expansive?” “Can white be so bright that
 it constricts your vision?” I ask them to flip their associations, which also
 have racial connotations. It is an exercise in perception of color and race.
 They realize that if they take a little more time, art can help them calm
 down.



 I curated another exhibition called
 Zarah Hussain: Breath, where a meditation on breathing is done
 through the paintings, and there is a digital animation that expands and
 contracts every five and a half seconds to help the viewers slow their
 breathing and enter a state of relaxation. We have eight paintings by the
 artist that are curated as four pairs; in each pair, one is an “inhale” and
 the other is an “exhale.” Then there is a room with the projected animation;
 it is generative so the color patterns vary every time. People enter this
 room, which is dark other than the projection, and they calm down completely
 and stay there for a long time. It has been wonderful to see.



 Also, we created a version of the animation online so that people could
 experience it from home during the pandemic. You can adjust the length of the
 breathing cycle and the color pattern. Whenever you need a break from
 meetings, you can turn on the animation.


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 <img decoding="async" width="700" alt="art_service_community2" class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/art_service_community2_700x466_b0dc911c0f.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T11:24:29.335Z" />
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 Zarah Hussain, Breath Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.
 Photography by Kathy Tarantola
 </figcaption>
 </figure>
</div>

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 A meditation on breathing is done through the paintings,
 and there is
 a digital animation that expands and contracts every five and a half
 seconds to help the viewers slow their breathing and enter a
 state of relaxation.
</h4>

<hr />

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 Q: Wow! That’s lovely. It’s also calming.



 SS: It
 is calming, and it is significant because breathing is deeply
 connected with Covid-19, which takes away people’s ability to breathe. And it
 connects to the death of George Floyd here in the United States. He said, “I
 can’t breathe” as some of his final words. A meditation on the breath just
 seemed so relevant this past year.



 Q: A lot of what I am hearing is art in service of community,
 so I want to
 know what led you to take your professional practice to these spaces. You
 are committed to building community and mending wounds through art
 collaboration and respectful communication. How easy or difficult has it
 been to do this?



 SS: I entered PEM
 as the curator of South Asian art. After about two years, George Floyd died,
 and our museum responded like a lot of institutions by acknowledging his
 death. When I saw the message, something about it did not feel comfortable, so
 I told our director, “I come to you with full respect, but I need to say that
 I am not comfortable with the messaging. Here is a different way I think we
 could have messaged this.” That’s when he understood that I have ideas about
 engaging the community in a respectful way.



 That’s when we started talking about my other role as Director of Education
 and Civic Engagement, which is new for the museum. Ours is a very big museum
 with a large footprint, but, like a lot of museums, our relationship with the
 community is complicated. We are not reaching a lot of people. My work is to
 find out how we can reach them. It’s difficult because we don’t decide what
 the community needs; the community tells us what they need. I go out and ask
 questions, but they don’t know me or my agenda, and whether they can trust me.
 I have been asking questions for over a year and we have started a bunch of
 new initiatives based on these conversations. But we need at least two years
 to gain people’s trust before we will see any change.



 The process is slow, and we need to show that we are committed. For example, I
 have a conversation with the YMCA, find out how they feel about us, what they
 like and what they don’t like. Then our team discusses the feedback, and we go
 back and ask, “Have we heard you correctly?” If yes, then we tell them we are
 going to develop a menu of partnerships. We think of four or five ways we can
 work together, then show them and get their thoughts. We do this a few times
 before we commit to one partnership – not too many, because we first need to
 make sure we are doing it correctly. We implement that and then we reconnect
 to talk about what went well, what did not go so well, and then decide that in
 six months we will do another project based on the outcome. It is a very slow
 process, but it is helps us earn trust.



 Q: I love that you said it’s not up to you to decide for them
 what they
 need, but it’s a space for them to tell you what is important to them. Is
 this also where your drive to set up intergenerational initiatives comes
 from?



 SS: A lot of
 museums have an older audience, which is predominantly white, well-educated,
 and often wealthy. School groups also come on field trips, but we don’t have a
 lot of teenage involvement. It is hard to draw teens, and that is the age when
 I fell in love with art. So, how do we create connections between those who
 are already coming to the museum and those who are not?



 During the pandemic, two populations have been very significantly impacted:
 Young people, who could not see their friends, and older people, who were the
 most vulnerable and isolated. We wondered how we could bring these two
 communities together, so we created a virtual art-making evening once a month
 called Create Night. People signed up, we mailed the art supplies to
 them, and they came together online – old people, young people, artists – all
 doing art together for about an hour. They got to talk to people. That is a
 way to get intergenerational programs going.



 We also started a bilingual initiative, because we have a very significant
 Spanish-speaking population here. We also host English as a Second Language
 classes for adults, and a teen program for learning English. We thought, “Why
 don’t we have the Spanish-speaking teens run tours in Spanish and English to
 teach the older Spanish speakers about the museum?” The teenagers speak to the
 adults, and they engage with one another.


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<hr />

<h4 class="has-text-align-center">
 We don’t decide what the community needs; the community
 tells us what
 they need.
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 Q: That is amazing! You’ve put together two groups of people
 who are
 unlikely to interact with each other, creating an opportunity to discover
 what they can learn from each other. Is this what you meant about your plans
 to reach more audiences in “original and unexpected ways”? It also seems a
 great way to improve the footfall in the museum.



 SS:
 Exactly. We are looking at unexpected ways of doing that. Another project
 happened last Thanksgiving: Older people living in public housing needed meals
 delivered. We participated in a campaign to send cards with the food, wishing
 them love and care. Our employees and a lot of artists drew beautiful things
 in these cards, and some also asked their kids to get involved. The people
 receiving the cards didn’t meet the people who sent them, but there was a
 connection happening.


<hr class="vertical-space1" />

<div class="block-image">
 <figure class="has-img-center" style="width : 600px !important">
 <img decoding="async" width="600" alt="art_service_community4" class="lazyload w-100"
 src="https://cdn-prod-static.heartfulness.org/art_service_community4_cef74e8d1b.jpg?updated_at=2023-04-07T11:25:19.281Z" />
 <figcaption>
 Gulam Rasul Santosh Untitled, 1983 Oil on canvas Gift of
 the Chester and Davida Herwitz Collection, 2001 Courtesy of the
 Peabody Essex Museum
 </figcaption>
 </figure>
</div>

<hr class="vertical-space1" />


 Q: That’s beautiful! I can just imagine the joy it must have
 brought people
 who are lonely and don’t have anyone else to call their own.



 SS: So lonely.
 Lonelier these past two years than most people have ever been in their lives.


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To be continued.

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