metropolitan museum of art - Indian Art News

Reliance Foundation pledges landmark gift to Met for Indian art

visionsart — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 18:48:52 +0000

Copyrighted image courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

NEW YORK – The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that the Reliance Foundation, the Indian philanthropic organization founded by Nita and Mukesh Ambani, has promised a generous gift to support exhibitions that explore and celebrate the arts of India.

“This is an outstanding commitment that will have a direct impact on The Met and the exhibitions it presents to its millions of annual visitors,” said Daniel H. Weiss, President and CEO of the Museum. “As a global institution, we are devoted to studying and displaying art from every corner of the world, and this is made possible only through the generosity of our friends. Nita and Mukesh Ambani are truly visionary benefactors, and we are enormously grateful for this meaningful gift.”

The gift will support a range of exhibitions examining the accomplishments and influence of the arts and artists of India across time and in all media. The first exhibition to benefit from this gift is this fall’s Modernism on the Ganges: Raghubir Singh Photographs, opening at The Met Breuer on October 11, 2017. A retrospective of the pioneering artist, it will present his work from the late 1960s through his last unpublished projects of the late 1990s. Other exhibitions that will benefit from this sponsorship will cover such topics as early Buddhist artfrom the first century B.C. to the fourth century A.D., 17th-century Mughal art, and contemporary Indian sculpture. More details about these exhibitions will be provided as their opening dates are confirmed.

Nita and Mukesh Ambani are great champions of The Met. In 2016, Mr. and Mrs. Ambani and the Reliance Foundation supported the exhibition Nasreen Mohamedi, the first museum retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States that was also one of The Met Breuer’s inaugural exhibitions when it opened that spring. With this new gift, Mr. and Mrs. Ambani and the Reliance Foundation will in time have sponsored three important Indian exhibitions at The Met Breuer—along with two at The Met Fifth Avenue—allowing their Indian culture and heritage to be shared with the millions who visit The Met from all over the world. Their generosity will be recognized in The Met Breuer, among other leadership donors to The Met’s important initiative to showcase a global representation of modern and contemporary artistic practice.

In 2017 the Museum honored Mrs. Ambani at The Met Winter Party, an event celebrating the achievements of those who foster greater diversity and inclusion in the world of art. Generous with her time and expertise, Mrs. Ambani is also a member of The Met’s new International Council.

“India has a rich heritage of art and culture that can be traced back to the fourth century B.C. At Reliance Foundation, it has been our ongoing mission to recognize and promote this valuable tradition by offering opportunities and platforms for Indian art locally in India and at various institutions around the globe. This partnership with The Met enables Indian art to be shown at an iconic institution and further encourages us to continue our work in the art world. We are truly delighted to be part of this long-term collaboration. We believe this will prove to be a wonderful partnership for learning and sharing that will go a long way for art in India,” said Nita Ambani, Founder, and Chairperson of Reliance Foundation.

Online: www.metmuseum.org

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“Sultans of Deccan India, 1500–1700” exhibit opens at the Metropolitan

visionsart — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 12:06:00 +0000

Photo: The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

PanARMENIAN.Net – The Deccan plateau of south-central India was home to a succession of highly cultured Muslim kingdoms with a rich artistic heritage. Under their patronage in the 16th and 17th centuries, foreign influences—notably from Iran, Turkey, eastern Africa, and Europe—combined with ancient and prevailing Indian traditions to create a distinctive Indo-Islamic art and culture. The landmark exhibition Sultans of Deccan India, 1500–1700: Opulence and Fantasy, which opened April 20 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, brings together some 200 of the finest works from major international, private, and royal collections, Art Daily reports.

Featuring many remarkable loans from India, the exhibition—which is the most comprehensive museum presentation on this subject to date—explores the unmistakable character of classical Deccani art in various media: poetic lyricism in painting; lively creations in metalwork; and a distinguished tradition of textile production. A highlight is the presentation of all of the known masterpieces and several new discoveries in painting, the greatest art of the Deccan. Another highlight is the display of diamonds—some of the largest ever found—that originated in the great mines of the Deccan.

The population of the Deccan plateau by the 16th century included immigrants from Central Asia and Iran, African military slaves, native-born Muslim nobles, and European missionaries, merchants, and mercenaries. As a result, it boasted one of the most cosmopolitan societies of the early modern world. To provide a glimpse into this dynamic, yet little-known society, the exhibition will focus chiefly on the courtly art of the kingdoms of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Bidar, and Golconda. These dynamic centers of royal patronage drew some of the greatest artists, writers, poets, and musicians of the period.

The golden age of Bijapur under the rule of Sultan Ibrahim Adil Shah II (1580–1627) defines the spirit of Deccani art. Masterpieces in painting by the leading court artist Farrukh Husain demonstrates the refined and lyrical style that influenced much of Deccani art. Ahmadnagar’s African nobility included the legendary Abyssinian Malik Ambar (1548–1628), whose portraits are included among other rare surviving works. Numerous examples of the celebrated bidri metalwork tradition from the kingdom of Bidar are also shown. These feature a base composed of a blackened alloy of zinc and copper with thin sheets of silver inlay in striking designs.

From antiquity until the 18th and 19th centuries, when diamonds were discovered in Brazil and Africa, India was virtually the sole source for these precious gems. The extremely rich mines of Golconda produced some of the largest known diamonds. Whether given as diplomatic gifts or traded by merchants, India’s diamonds reached an appreciative audience among European royalty. The Deccan, already astonishingly wealthy, was further enriched by foreign demand for these gems. Among the treasures from Golconda—whose diamond mines were the source of such diamonds as the legendary Kohinoor—is a group of magnificent gems from international royal collections, including the “Idol’s Eye” and “Agra” diamonds.

Also shown are spectacular large painted and printed textiles (kalamkaris), several over nine feet in height and all richly painted with motifs drawn from Indian, Islamic, and European art. These are shown along with sumptuous royal objects made of inlaid and gilded metal, precious jewels, carved wood, and stone architectural elements, many of which draw inspiration from the art of Safavid Persia and Ottoman Turkey.

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Exhibition of exquisite jewels from the Mughal period in India begins at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

visionsart — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 14:34:00 +0000

Display of works from the Al-Thani Collection.

NEW YORK: A superb new exhibition ‘Treasures from India: Jewels from the Al-Thani Collection’ begins today, October 28, through January 25, 2015, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, here in New York.

Finial from the throne of Tipu Sultan, Mysore, ca. 1790. Gold, inlaid with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds; lac core. The Al-Thani Collection.

Some 60 jeweled objects from the private collection formed by Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah Al-Thani are on display in the exhibition. It provides a glimpse into the evolving styles of the jeweled arts in India from the Mughal period until the early 20th century, with emphasis on later exchanges with the West.

The exhibition, sponsored by Cartier, include historical works from the Mughal period in the 17th century and from various courts and centers of the 18th and 19th centuries, including Hyderabad; a group of late 19th- and 20th-century jewels made for India’s Maharajas by Cartier and other Western firms; and contemporary commissions inspired by traditional Indian forms.

On view are also several antique gems that were incorporated into modern settings by Maison Cartier, jewelry designer Paul Iribe, and others. Contextual information is provided through historical photographs and portraits of Indian royalty wearing works similar to those on view.

Among the Mughal works are an elegant jade dagger originally owned by two emperors—the hilt was made for Jahangir and it was re-bladed for his son Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal. In the 19th century, the dagger was in the collection Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the Morse code. The hilt features a miniature sculpture—a European-style head.

Historically, the gem form favored throughout India has been the cabochon. In the traditional kundan technique, a gem is set within a bed of gold, and often backed in foil to enhance its color. Another highlight of the exhibition will be a gem-set tiger head finial originally from the throne of Tipu Sultan (1750–1799), which incorporated numerous cabochon diamonds, rubies, and emeralds in a kundan setting.

Also on view will be several examples of North Indian sarpesh and jigha (turban ornaments) from 1875–1900, brought together in a display that traces their evolution from traditional plume-inspired forms and techniques toward more Western shapes and construction. Silver foil backing was used; however, the diamonds were set using a Western-style claw or coronet, rather than the kundan setting.

And a work designed by the artist Paul Iribe and made by goldsmith Robert Linzeler in 1910 in Paris recalls the kind of aigrette (decorative pin) that would have ornamented the turban of a Maharaja or Nizam. At the center is a large emerald, carved in India between 1850 and 1900.

Ragamala – Picturing Sound: Visitors, who did not catch the exhibition Ragamala, have an opportunity to do, through December 14^th of this year at the museum.

A ragamala, translated from Sanskrit as “garland of ragas,” is a series of paintings depicting a range of musical melodies known as ragas. Its root word, raga, means color, mood, and delight, and the depiction of these moods was a favored subject in later Indian court paintings. The celebration of music in painting is a distinctly Indian preoccupation.

Ragamalas were first identified as a specific painting genre in the second half of the fifteenth century, but their ancestry can be traced to the fifth- to seventh-century Brihaddeshi treatise, which states: “A raga is called by the learned that kind of composition which is adorned with musical notes . . . which have the effect of coloring the hearts of men.” Often, the mood, or raga, is also written as poetry on the margins of the painting. These works evocatively express the intersections of painting, poetry, and music in Indian court art.

The unifying subject of a ragamala is love, which is evoked as a range of specific emotions (rasa) that have a corresponding musical form. In paintings these are typically the trials and passions of lovers, which are explored in both sound (raga) and analogous imagery, with a raga generally understood to denote the male protagonist and a ragini the female. These musical modes are also linked to six seasons—summer, monsoon, autumn, early winter, winter, and spring—and times of the day, dawn, dusk, night, and so on.

Created as loose leaf folios, typically thirty-six or forty-two in number, which were stored in a portfolio, ragamala circulated within the inner court circles that commissioned them. Viewing these paintings was a pleasurable pastime for courtiers, their guests, and the ladies of the zenana. These ragamalas were also painted as murals in the private quarters of palaces, though few of these have survived.

The exhibition features Indian paintings and musical instruments from the museum’s collection.

By The American Bazaar Staff

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