ABSTRACT
During the 1985-86 Festival of India in the US, M. Palaniappan was everywhere. Whether seated on a dais at the National Museum of Natural History near the Mall in Washington, DC, or working with local brick makers on the West Coast to produce massive terracotta horses for an exhibition at the Mingei International Crafts Museum, Palaniappan and his work permeated the Festival (Figure 11.1). In addition to the Smithsonian’s Aditi exhibition in DC and Haku Shah’s Forms of Mother Earth: Contemporary Terracottas from India show in San Diego, his work anchored the entryway to the Brooklyn Museum’s From Indian Earth, leading visitors into the gallery spaces beyond (Figure 11.2). Palaniappan made these works in the US, often demonstrating his techniques in person in the gallery and collaborating with local ceramicists to find or construct kilns suitable for both the scale and the type of object he produced. Indeed, a large part of his ubiquity had to do with the dramatic scale of his works – his horses often rose above his head and when displayed in groups offered a spectacular focal point used by curators across these three shows. Furthermore, unlike most objects brought to America for Festival of India shows, some of his horses remained in the US – the Smithsonian, for example, acquired several of Palaniappan’s works, and both the Mingei Museum and the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe added his work to their collections.1
