Kathmandu, April 4:

At long last, here’s a good news for the artists of the country.

The government is pushing a legislation, which will address the grievances of artists.

“Given what is in the pipeline, grumbling artists of the country cannot only feel satisfied but also celebrate. The government is pushing a watershed legislation, which will go a long way in ameliorating the plight of the artists,” a senior art writer and artist, Madan Chitrakar, said.

He said this while launching a rave preview of the Nepal Art Academy Bill, 2007, which, among others, has envisioned an Art Academy as part of the institutional effort to encourage art.

“We are happy that the government has taken our pleas seriously. We had been asked to come up with a draft bill. We put down all that we had been demanding over the years. We are expecting a truly good law,” Chitrakar, one of the three artists picked up to draft the bill, told The Himalayan Times.

Others who were in the task force to draft the law were artists Navindra Rajbhandari and Narendra Bahadur Shrestha.

High points of the draft could send the budding artists jumping in the air, literally.

Chitrakar said the bill has a provision “whereby promising and budding artists can expect to have international exposure at no personal cost time and again or as opportunities build up.”

“The bill has been drafted keeping in mind the need to take care of the past, present and future of arts movement in Nepal,” he said.