The Curator Redefining Contemporary Art at the Barbican Centre

Mariko Finch
What first sparked your interest in art? Can you pinpoint a particular moment or an object?

Shanay Jhaveri
I’d never anticipated having a career in the arts; it snuck up on me. I was fortunate to grow up in a home where I was surrounded by art, and I was exposed to it in various contexts, from museums to traditional or historic architecture in India and abroad. In this way my parents really shaped my and my sibling’s understanding of art – that any fulsome experience of a place or another culture is through its art.

I went to college with the expectation of doing literature, and ended up studying film and art history before I arrived at exhibition-making, which is now at the centre of what I do as a curator. So the working with art objects came belatedly.

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Indian and South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art

Mariko Finch
What was your early relationship to art like?

Shanay Jhaveri
My maternal grandmother was invested in Indian culture and art – modern and premodern – and she was friends with a few artists in Bombay in the mid-20th century, so the walls of our home were dotted with works. My father has continued to collect, and my extended family is also involved and engaged in the arts as well, as collectors and now more recently as gallerists.

The arts were always very present for me. It was very much about experiencing art in museums or thinking of art as historic monuments – seeing it as part of, or intrinsic to, any cultural experience. That was always crucial. My parents really shaped my and my sibling’s understanding of art through that prism – that any wholesome experience of a place or another culture is through its art.

Mariko Finch
Is it fair to say you were fully immersed in creativity in a holistic way? It sounds like there was an interplay for you – the appreciation of music, architecture, visual art and film. That seems like a very rounded experience.

Shanay Jhaveri
It wasn’t just the visual arts, it was also music. My maternal grandmother studied the sitar, and music was always present in our home. It’s something that has stayed with me as well; it inculcated in me an appreciation for Indian classical music and other forms of musical expression.

When I was younger, I didn’t have the language to articulate what all that exposure meant. Along with the academic training I’ve had, it’s allowed me to think in an interdisciplinary fashion. And now, to be at the Barbican, whose program was always intended to be interdisciplinary, it feels like a fortuitous alignment.

Mariko Finch
As an academic, curator and collector, how do those different facets of your life influence each other?

Shanay Jhaveri
I joined The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York when Sheena Wagstaff had just left Tate and was reimagining the Modern and Contemporary Department at this storied, encyclopaedic museum. She gave me the opportunity to take what I was studying in an academic sense and a platform to see how that could be manifested. We have our own sensibilities – the things we like, the things we are drawn to – but when building a collection for an institution or thinking about it, within a part of a larger programme, you have to find a way to put that aside and consider what the programme, collection and institution need.

I didn’t fully understand the gravity of that until I having to build this collection of South Asian modern and contemporary art, which they didn’t have, and to articulate a strategy for it. That really separated the academic from the actual experience of acquiring and making exhibitions at The Met.

Mariko Finch
Do you have to be more democratic in terms of what’s culturally representative, and not just personally your own taste?

Shanay Jhaveri
Yes, it’s about the institutional history – the values and purposes of that organisation and where you are intervening in that. My role was to diversify the collection and address a historic blind spot. How do you do that belatedly? And while sitting at the nexus of an international art history, a national art history and an institutional art history – and how do you weave these all together? It was about seeing what made sense within the context of The Met – what was most provocative or that best aligned with or challenged the institution’s sensibility.

Mariko Finch
Does it feel like a big responsibility to stay true to the ethos of the institution whilst addressing contemporary conversations?

Shanay Jhaveri
It was an immense responsibility, and I feel very grateful that it was offered to me. When I joined The Met, it had a modest set of holdings of South Asian modern and contemporary art, and over the six years I was there we added more than 85 works from the region. More than half were by women across a range of media, and the first acquisitions were from Bangladesh, Malaysia and Sri Lanka – so really expanding the geography as well. It was this wonderfully robust process of also talking to my colleagues in the department, who were working on different geographic areas, and learning from them as well.

Mariko Finch
What have been the most memorable moments of your career? Was there something that surprised you, or something that you had always wanted to achieve?

Shanay Jhaveri
Quite soon after arriving, Sheena Wagstaff told me I would be curating The Met’s annual Roof Garden Commission. I had never worked with a living artist!

It was such a massive undertaking, and an incredibly important moment for me, learning how to make a project that is not a historic exhibition. I learnt so much from Huma Bhabha, as an artist and how she, with such confidence and clarity, approached The Met, its collection and that very iconic skyline. I continued to work on many commissions for The Met. I did a Facade Commission with Carol Bove, and another Roof Garden Commission with Alex Da Corte.

One of the virtues of working with living artists is that you experience firsthand how they approach a collection of the world – how they distil what’s around us and make it into an object. That’s such a thrilling experience to be a bystander to – not to mention to support and deliver. I feel that it’s very critical for institutions to engage living artists in that way.

Another pivotal moment for me was coming to the Barbican and initiating a series of site-specific commissions that live outside of the Barbican gallery spaces. We launched that with Ranjani Shettar in September 2022 and continued it with Ibrahim Mahama in 2023.

Mariko Finch
Every city has a cultural personality. What are the main differences between working in New York and London?

Shanay Jhaveri
The Met’s collection was at the centre of much of the work we did in New York; by contrast, the Barbican does not have a collection. It was conceived as a community space whose function is an arts centre where a fuller way of life means living with the arts, from theatre and music to cinema and social arts. I’ve been navigating that since I took on the role, and the real responsibility is shaping a programme for the Barbican that occupies such a significant place within the cultural discourse of London. As institutions, they have very different relationships with their audiences and the community around them.

The space was borne out of very modernist, mid-20th-century utopian ideals. How do we hold onto those today? That challenge actually prompted my decision to reside at the Barbican. I live and work here, which has allowed me to spend time observing audiences who come to with the centre as a place. Many people don’t even go into our galleries or theatres, and I think there is so much to learn from that.

Mariko Finch
Do you have a favourite artist, object or a work of art that you live with?

Shanay Jhaveri
I’m living in what I would say is an art object in itself. It’s incredible to have an apartment that was conceived and designed with such ideological precision and thought. You can sense it in the original frames and fittings, and so one doesn’t have to do too much to retain that feeling of a work of art.

I have two chairs by Mini Boga from her furniture line, Taaru, which she designed in New Delhi in the 1960s. For me they are incredible emblems of Indian modernist furniture design, and they sit so nicely in the context of the Barbican. Another object I have is a vase that Carol Bove gave me after our project together, just to acknowledge our collaboration. Seeing these perfect modernist forms in the space of the Barbican feels very satisfying.

Mariko Finch
Is there a point where, either professionally or personally, instinct kicks in and plays a part in acquiring and appreciating art?

Shanay Jhaveri
I think we have to be guided by our intuition. We have to allow our instinct to lead us to certain things. Over time that might become a sensibility as you establish patterns and clarify your areas of commitment – which can eventually translate into a collection that speaks to others and a holds set of values or formal aesthetic properties.

But equally, something I keep reminding myself is that if I’m immediately challenged by something, or if I have a strong reaction to it, then that requires me to spend more time with it. It may not mean that I will come out liking it, but I try not to rely on what seems to sit with you.

Sometimes that difficulty is what’s most valuable. How can something that initially feels unintelligible become more legible, or at least remind you of the importance of that place of discomfort when trying to understand something? Many conversations about collecting focus on whether we like a work of art of not, but to me this is the most exciting encounter to have. “Liking” is too easy a gesture now – you like an Instagram post. Art should be more challenging than that.

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