I’m a big dreamer who made most of my dreams come true. One dream was to give back to Goa… what this wonderful state has given us as a legacy. A legacy of great culture, kaleidoscope diversity and formidable ancient history,’ the late designer Wendell Rodricks wrote, while fashioning the idea of the Moda Goa Museum.
It was while researching for an article for a book on the Pano Bhaju Costume worn to dance the Goan Mando that Rodricks realised he was at the start of an adventure of discovery. It would take him through two internships in museums in New York and Lisbon, through 10 years of research, resulting in the dream of setting up the first ever fashion museum in India. For more than two decades, Rodricks, and his partner, Jerome Marrel, worked towards making the dream a reality.
Once word spread, the artefacts started coming in. An altar piece from an old church that had been part of a family home, clothes worn by older generations, ornaments in gold that were specimens of the exquisite handiwork of Goan goldsmiths of yore… future curators, Rodricks and Marrel received it all and ensured everything was stored safely.
Then fate intervened. With no warning, on February 12, 2020, Rodricks died of a heart attack as he was taking his customary afternoon nap. And in March the same year, with Covid razing through the country, a nationwide lockdown brought India to a standstill. It would have forced anyone to abandon an orphan dream that was indeed larger than life. But Marrel held on to the idea. It has been three decades since the beginning, and now the Museum is at the take-off point.
“With his usual meticulous way of planning everything, Wendell had put every single thing about the museum down on record,” Marrel says. And indeed, the designer had not just decided on what each of the galleries of his museum would carry but even the colour of each room and floors and the manner in which everything would be displayed. There was much to be done. “The site had to be made worthy of housing clothes and photos that could be affected by humidity. The flooring was another expensive proposition; we used liquid cement to be able to add colours, so we have floors in different colours in every gallery, and walls ranging from grey to fuscia to teal and gold,” Marrel says.
The project had already taken Rs 3 crore, and more was needed. “But all our proposed sponsors pulled out post Covid,” Marrel says. To meet the Rs 6.5-crore deficit, the museum seeks sponsors who can have rooms dedicated to their name. Ten of the 18 galleries have already been sponsored. Galleries include those with artefacts and photos of a Goa before the Portuguese came in, international influences, the Inquisition, the Parsis in Goa, Liberation Heroes, artefacts to mark the Rites of Passage and celebratory events. There is an extended textile and fashion museum, and a massive gold section. A corridor is dedicated to six-year-old Prateek, who created art while being treated for a fatal cancer. A special library houses the mammoth collection of books on art, food, travel and fashion collected by Rodricks over the years.
All going well, the space—that is a far cry from ‘the dark spaces where one reads a caption’ that traditional museums generally are—should open by the year-end. The Moda Goa Museum will be ‘a stop on the international crossroads of humanity’ with performances and events in the courtyard adding to the history breathing within the building.