The finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, has chosen to make artworks & antiquities fully exempt from customs duties when they are imported for purpose of public display. Private galleries and art collections can benefit immensely from this new concession, provided the painting or sculpture they bring in gets a public viewing. And that’s indeed a big change!
Until now, curators and collectors have been complaining that getting works in and out of the country equates red-tape of an Egyptian mummy’s wrappings, so to say, points out James Lamont in The UK Financial Times. His post ‘India: the art of the tax break’ mentions:
“Surprisingly for a nation with rich artistic traditions and celebrated contemporary artists, bringing art and antiques into India is as difficult as taking them out. Museum curators – close to the lowest rung in the state bureaucracy, just as the finance ministry is the top – have put up with this for decades. The FM is expert at pleasing the mass of voters with extra public spending. But the move on art shows he can pander to more singular tastes.”The president of the Congress party, Sonia Gandhi, does have a declared interest in art as well as art restoration. And so do collectors among India’s biggest business families, such as Nita Ambani, wife of industrialist Mukesh Ambani, and Kiran Nadar, wife of HCL’s chief Shiv Nadar.
A sop to these powerful matrons of the arts sure is a deft a touch. Moreover, espousing art nationalism, already shared by countries like China, Brazil and Russia, is only to be expected from an emerging superpower. In his budget speech, Mr. Mukherjee praised collectors for ‘locating heritage works of Indian art & antiquities in foreign countries and also bringing them back home.”
A stroke of the pen has just offered India’s collectors a little more cut and much needed thrust to bring home their coveted treasures and trophies.
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