Enfilade

From the press release (3 December 2025) for the exhibition:

Longing: Painting from the Pahari Kingdoms of the Northwest Himalayas

Cincinnati Art Museum, 6 February — 7 June 2026

Curated by Ainsley Cameron

Krishna Playing with the Gopis in the Yamuna River, ca. 1770, India, Himachal Pradesh, Nurpur, opaque watercolor and gold on paper, (Cleveland Museum of Art, purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection and Millikin Purchase Fund, 2018.118).

Featuring more than 40 works of art, Longing: Painting from the Pahari Kingdoms of the Northwest Himalayas will present colorful court paintings from present-day India dating between the 17th and 19th centuries. Practicing unique techniques, artists produced these small, portable paintings primarily for royal, noble, and priestly patronage. The paintings were often given as gifts between regional nobility, families, and political allies creating large networks of artistic exchange.

Influenced by the region’s culture and politics, the artworks portray longing in several ways: through paintings of devotees who long to connect with the divine, through individuals and couples who yearn for romance, and through rulers and noblemen who longed to be at the center of political control. The exhibition encourages visitors to experience art as multisensory. Select paintings will be paired with scent or touch opportunities, while others are paired with musical soundscapes, to heighten the works’ bhava (emotion or mood) and encourage multiple ways to physically, intellectually, and emotionally connect with the art.

“This exhibition explores paintings through the lens of a shared human emotion,” reflects Ainsley M. Cameron, PhD, Curator of South Asian Art, Islamic Art & Antiquities at CAM. “Through color, form, and composition, paintings that portray devotional and cultural values, amorous alliance, or political gain also reveal an emotive force reflective of the region in which they were produced. I’m excited to share the vibrant painting histories of the Pahari region with Cincinnati audiences, to encourage our visitors to actively participate in their museum experience, to interact with art in multiple ways, and to forge new connections with the works on display.”

Longing is part of a larger research project connecting the South Asian art collections at the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), and the National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) in Washington, DC. Alongside scholars based in India, curators from these three museums are working collaboratively to research, publish, and display works from the Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim Collection. Beginning in April 2026, the CMA and the NMAA will also present exhibitions of paintings from the Pahari kingdoms. These three distinct thematic exhibitions are presented in the publication Pahari Paintings: Art and Stories, a lavishly illustrated volume that foregrounds recent research in paintings from this mountainous region. Published by the Cleveland Museum of Art and Yale University Press, the volume celebrates both the Benkaim Collection and this cross-institutional collaboration.

Sonya Rhie Mace, Sarang Sharma, and Vijay Sharma, eds., Pahari Paintings: Art and Stories (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2026), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-0300286489, $65. With contributions by Catherine Glynn Benkaim, Ainsley Cameron, Debra Diamond, and Vrinda Agrawal