GCDA plans international centre to preserve child prodigy Clint’s works

If all goes well, the astonishing collection of over 25,000 drawings by child prodigy Edmond Thomas Clint, who passed away at the tender age of six, will finally find a permanent home in a state-of-the-art international centre.

The Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) has drawn up a ₹15-crore project to establish the Clint International Centre for Children on its land in Kakkanad, based on a design by Kochi-based architect Jaigopal Govinda Rao. Complementing this initiative, a permanent gallery of Clint’s selected works will be opened by GCDA in Kadavanthra on Thursday (March 12). Industries Minister P. Rajeeve will inaugurate the gallery that will exhibit over 100 curated pieces.

“The proposed centre will preserve Clint’s works in a temperature-controlled environment. We are exploring funding avenues to realise the project,” GCDA sources said. The initiative could not have come a day sooner, considering that Clint’s earliest works are now 47-years-old. Had he been alive, he would have turned 50 on May 19 this year.

Since his death in 1983, Clint’s mother, Chinnamma Joseph, has been zealously guarding her son’s creative treasure trove - mostly crayon, pencil, and pen sketches, with him turning to watercolours only a year before his death. “Hopefully, GCDA will be able to set up the centre. Then I can safely hand over the works, which risk damage with each passing year,” she said.

Until Clint’s father passed away in 2019, the works travelled across Kerala for exhibitions. Today, the priceless collection lies stacked in almirahs at their home in Kaloor. Asked to choose a favourite, the 73-year-old mother said wistfully: “That’s impossible, every work is special to me.”

Curator Bony Thomas—journalist, cartoonist, and historian—spent over a year with Ms. Joseph to select the works. “I shared with him the stories, contexts, and experiences behind each picture,” she recalled. Prints of the original works to be exhibited at the gallery will accompany these descriptions.

Despite undergoing multiple surgeries recently, Ms. Joseph insisted on leaving the hospital to attend the inauguration, an occasion she would not miss for the world. Once the ceremony concludes, she will return to hospital care, carrying with her the quiet satisfaction of seeing her son’s genius honoured anew.