Narendra Desirazu is promoter of the Bangalore-based Jennard Galleries, a start-up which offers innovative art education and learning programmes to educational institutions, enabling students to study and analyse copyrighted reprints of great works of art from around the world.
Newspeg. In the seven months since Jennard launched commercial operations in April last year, several high-profile private schools including Oakridge International, Chrysallis High, Indus International, Lawrence School, and Insight Academy apart from the International Institute of Information Technology (all in the garden city), and the Ashok Leyland School in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, have signed up for its ArtVantage programme. Jennard’s in-school great works of art exhibitions are marketed as integrated packages of ten canvases for a three-month rental period at Rs.950 per painting, inclusive of installation charges and teaching aids.
Genesis. Jennard Galleries is the outcome of Desirazu’s growing appreciation of art, developed during frequent visits to major museums worldwide and a general passion for buying eye-catching reprints, says this alumnus of Madras and Iowa State universities who worked for over two decades as an IT professional in India and abroad. “My objective is to teach art appreciation and spark creativity in Indian youth. Good museums in India are rare and even the few good ones showcase only Indian art,” he says. To follow up on his dream, in early 2013, Desirazu invested Rs.10 lakh from his personal savings into the project.
Direct talk. “Each package is accompanied by curatorial notes describing the artist, the art form, details of each canvas and supplementary teaching aids such as DVDs and researched power point presentations,” says Desirazu, who returned to India in 2002 and has several start-ups in the IT sector to his credit.
Future plans. With school managements and students having resp-onded enthusiastically to Jennard Galleries’ art education and appreciation initiative, Desirazu is encouraged to extend the footprint of ArtVantage beyond Bangalore. “We’ve drawn up plans to install our licenced reprints of great works of art across the country in 700 educational institutions over the next three years. For this, we are in the process of signing up franchise partners in other cities. We have also partnered with Camlin to help us popularise art via their art competitions and are connecting with corporates to roll out ArtVantage to less privileged schools through their CSR initiatives,” enthuses Desirazu.
Way to go!
Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)