AS Guyana celebrates its 47th birthday, our National Gallery — Castellani House – is doing some celebrating of its own, since it has turned 20.

The National Gallery is celebrating this milestone with an ongoing exhibition of work that dates back to the 1930s.
Curator of the gallery for most of its existence, Ms. Elfreida Bissember, said the pieces on display were chosen from the most significant works of Guyana’s leading artist, and really look at what it means to be Guyanese. Leading artists with most works of significance were chosen for the exhibition.
Bissember said that with regular purchasing of art having begun in 1961, the gallery steadily expanded, in particular under the late Denis Williams, brilliant artist and polymath, founder of several of our cultural institutions, and Director of Art from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, when much of the contemporary collection was thus formed.
The Gallery, inaugurated on May 24, 1993, became the location where all efforts of preserving and promoting the idea of Guyanese art could be focused. Since the gallery’s founding, more than 200 pieces have been added to a collection of over 700 works, the promotion and preservation of which remain the prime mission of the National Art Gallery.
Bissember noted that the gallery has, in its life, shared and promoted the many treasures of the National Collection; at the same time building connections with the public, and particularly with the community of artists, who could be sure in the knowledge that their work could be critically supported, interpreted, and presented to the public through exhibitions (so far, over 130 in number) workshops, and links with institutions in the Caribbean region and beyond. She said the curator’s role is to mediate between the artist and the public, and be responsible for promoting art to the public.
Now that this significant milestone has been reached, the question that begs asking is what has changed in those two decades. Bissember notes that, across time and generations, artists hold the same preoccupations, manifested in different forms as they strive to mediate between thought and intuition and their physical expression through manipulation of their materials.
She pointed out that technique and execution are therefore of prime importance, despite the apparent differences in styles from one artist or generation to another. Additionally, ideas and themes are recurring and common across the years, threatening the sense of a constant yet evolving Guyanese identity.
To illustrate, she points out ‘Birth of Guyana” a painting by Terence Roberts, and a Mahogany sculpture done nearly 15 years later by the young graduand Winslow Craig, wherein he creates a sturdy indigenous Guyanese, grasping and holding aloft the geographical shape of Guyana, speared in a daring claim of “Discovery”.
Bissember said that as the gallery celebrates the anniversary, it is important to remember with high regard those who are no longer with us. She said the gallery’s Founding Chair of the Gallery Board, the late Janet Jagan, former First Lady of Guyana and herself President, with her tireless enthusiasm, her knowledge and energy, worked with a gallery board to ensure establishment and continuation of many of the gallery’s events and programmes.
In the year before he died, Philip Moore completed a work in memory of Mrs Jagan, entitled ‘Jagan Guyana’, which he donated to the gallery in 2011.
The Gallery is constricted by space, but plans are in place to build a library with mainly art books and journals, as well as a database of art works.
“In the years since its inauguration, much has been done, yet much more remains to be done, as we are aware and have more than once declared that we are still in the process of building merely the strong foundation for what must follow in the many exciting years of expansion, achievement, and interaction with our public that lie ahead,” Bissember said.
Despite challenges, she promises to continue to push along to see how much can be achieved in the years ahead.
The exhibition will continue at the National Gallery until Saturday, August 3.