New Book | The Atlas of World Embroidery
From Princeton UP:
Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood, The Atlas of World Embroidery: A Global Exploration of Heritage and Styles (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2026), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-0691261911, £50 / $60.
A richly illustrated history of embroidery and needlework, showcasing the glorious range of styles, motifs, and materials used around the world.
Embroidery is one of the world’s most widely shared forms of creative expression—and one of its most varied and diverse. It can be found in every region, yet its visual languages, themes, and techniques vary greatly: some are marked by unique styles and others show influences from neighboring cultures. The Atlas of World Embroidery examines many distinctive embroidery styles and traditions found across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. From the quillwork and birch boxes of Indigenous North America to the decorative matyo style of Hungary, the zardozi embroiderers of India, and the satin stitches of Han Dynasty China, Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood provides a comprehensive history of embroidery, describing its materials and tools, its designs and symbols, and its uses and makers. Emphasizing the visual aspects of embroidery across cultures, the atlas features an unprecedented array of color images celebrating the art form. Organized geographically by region and country, and focusing on hand needlework with relevant examples of machine forms, The Atlas of World Embroidery is a beautiful and authoritative exploration of this ancient craft.
• Lavishly illustrated throughout in full color with more than 300 images.
• Features full and close-up images of embroidered fabrics, including household items and clothing, along with insightful analysis.
• Includes sections on the Americas; Europe; Sub-Saharan Africa; the Arabic World; Turkey, the Iranian Plateau, and Central Asia; the Indian Subcontinent; East Asia; and Southeast Asia and Australasia—with subsections on individual countries, cultures, and kinds of embroidery.
• Contains a directory of design motifs depicting patterns from around the world.
Gillian Vogelsang-Eastwood is a design historian and textile archaeologist. She is director of the Textile Research Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands, and chief editor of the multivolume Bloomsbury World Encyclopedia of Embroidery. She is the coauthor of Dressed with Distinction: Garments from Ottoman Syria and Covering the Moon: An Introduction to Middle Eastern Face Veils.
Exhibition | French Drawings in Portuguese Collections
Now on view at Portugal’s National Museum Soares dos Reis, with an English summary from the Instagram account of Trois Crayons:
The presence of many French artists in Portugal from the beginning of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century—and their impact on the development of Portuguese art, especially the decorative arts—is the great revelation of this selection of works.
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Drawings by European Masters in Portuguese Collections III: France
Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas III: França
Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis, Porto, 13 December 2025 — 26 April 2026
Curated by Nicholas Turner
Com mecenato do BPI | Fundação La Caixa e apoio das Tintas CIN, esta é a primeira exposição dedicada a desenhos franceses de coleções públicas e privadas portuguesas, e a terceira e última de uma série de exposições organizadas com o intuito de divulgar o pouco conhecido acervo de desenhos de antigos mestres conservado no nosso país.
A primeira exposição, Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas (2000–01), apresentou aos visitantes obras de referência de todas as escolas, enquanto a segunda, Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas II: Itália e Portugal (2021), se centrou na influência da arte italiana no desenvolvimento da arte portuguesa desde o século XVI até ao início do XIX.
Com a exposição Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas III: França pretende-se mostrar que a história da influência do desenho francês em Portugal é diferente, apesar de acidentada e sujeita a flutuações políticas. De facto, a presença de muitos artistas franceses em solo nacional desde o início do século XVIII até ao início do século XX—e o seu impacto no desenvolvimento da arte portuguesa, especialmente das artes decorativas—é a grande revelação da presente seleção de obras.
Quer fugindo de ambientes políticos difíceis ou evitando a forte concorrência na corte francesa, pelo menos meia dúzia de émigrés franceses, como Pierre-Antoine Quillard, Pierre Massart de Rochefort ou Jean-Baptiste Pillement, representados nesta exposição, deixaram a sua marca—e os seus desenhos—em Portugal. Este legado torna-se claro a partir de uma grande variedade de pinturas, desenhos e obras ilustradas que foram executadas no nosso país.
Com curadoria de Nicholas Turner, um dos mais prestigiados especialistas internacionais na área do desenho, a exposição Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas III: França, inclui 88 obras, quatro das quais em formato de livro, ficando patente ao público até 26 abril 2026.
Nicholas Turner, Desenhos de Mestres Europeus em Coleções Portuguesas III: França (Porto: Blue Book, 2026), 216 pages, ISBN: 978-9899223318, €40.
Call for Essays | History of Emotions in Visual Culture
From the Call for Contributions, via ArtHistory.net:
Edited Volume | The History of Emotions Seen through Visual Culture
Proposals due by 30 March 2026
Today, emotions are present in every aspect of daily life: think of how joy, sadness, loneliness, and compassion, to name just a few, are emotional axes that underpin the experiences of the 21st century. This premise not only marks the contemporary, but also colours all cultural production created throughout time. To speak of a history of emotions linked to visual culture is to understand that images not only shape or produce emotions and feelings in a viewer, but also act as an active instrument that represents them. See how paintings, engravings, sculptures, films, and digital images themselves participate in the configuration of an emotional language, illustrating what should be felt, how it should be done, and how it is expressed.
From this framework, the image must be understood as a located affective element, that is, its emotionality is linked to specific practices, modes of circulation, and reception that mark the entire history. Thus, proposing an examination of visual culture from the history of emotions allows us to establish a dialogue focused on tracing how all these feelings are translated through gestures, attitudes, poses, in short, any visual message, and how these, in turn, operate in processes of power, identity, memory and individual or collective experience.
This collective volume aims to explore how emotions are produced, questioned, circulated, and perpetuated through visual practices in any historical context. The resulting book is intended to form a dialogue between the history of emotions and visual culture.
The suggested thematic areas are as follows—they are not exclusive:
1 Iconography of feeling: gestures, expressions, bodies, pain, grief, fear, desire, shame, pride, tenderness, etc. All those emotions that can be gleaned from the iconographic and iconological study of a work.
2 Emotions and the politics of images: propaganda, iconoclasm, censorship, mobilisation, memory.
3 Tactics of reception: gaze, empathy, identification, and interpretive communities.
4 The materiality of affections: image objects, relics, and transmission in museums.
5 Technologies of affections: visual technologies and affections: photography, cinema, TV, social networks, AI, digital archives.
This volume seeks relevant chapters that deal with specific and broad visual corpora (painting, engraving, illustrated press, photography, cinema, memes, video games, family archives, museography, etc.), open to any period. The interest lies in proposing an argument focused not only on representations, but also on how they were used, circulated, or in which practices they were inscribed. Proposals are accepted in Spanish and English.
To be considered, please submit a proposal with a title, an abstract (300–400 words), a brief CV (100–150 words), and five keywords by 30 April 2026 to emocionesyculturavisual@hotmail.com with the subject: “CFP — Emotions and visual culture — Surname.” Notification of acceptance will be sent by 15 May 2026. Complete chapters will be due by 30 September 2026 (extendable).
Exhibition | Rome and Milan as Capitals of Neoclassicism
Installation view of the exhibition Eterno e Visione: Roma e Milano Capitali del Neoclassicismo
(Milan, Gallerie d’Italia, 2025)
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Now on view at the Gallerie d’Italia in Milan:
Eterno e Visione: Roma e Milano Capitali del Neoclassicismo
Gallerie d’Italia, Milan, 28 November 2025 — 6 April 2026
Curated by Francesco Leone, Elena Lissoni, and Fernando Mazzocca
From 1796, the year of Napoleon’s descent into Italy, until 1815, marked by the defeat at Waterloo and the Congress of Vienna, a radical political, economic, and social change took place on the peninsula. The momentous turning point of the Napoleonic Age also significantly involved the artistic scene. Only Rome and Milan escaped the decadence of major artistic centres like Florence, Venice, Genoa, and Naples. The Eternal City persisted as the universal capital of the arts due to the abundance of its heritage, from both antiquity and the Renaissance of Raphael and Michelangelo. Artists from all over the world continued to flock to Rome to learn their trade, and the city’s economy profited greatly from the presence of their studios and the activity of various workshops, which produced internationally appreciated bronzes and mosaics. The exhibition aims to evoke this exceptional creative season, comparing the highest level of artistic production of these two ‘capitals’, projected towards modern Europe while remaining firmly attached to the greatness of the past.
The leading artists in the exhibition are two brilliant men who were close friends: Antonio Canova, one of the most important artists of all time, and Giuseppe Bossi, an extraordinary painter, great connoisseur of Leonardo, and a sophisticated collector, as well as founder of the Pinactoca di Brera. Visitors can admire Antonio Canova’s masterpiece—previously thought to have been lost—the large model of a horse currently undergoing exceptional restoration. Other masterpieces by Bossi, Canova, and Andrea Appiani illustrate the creation of the image of Italy, in its well-known and then more popular iconography, due precisely to their genius.
The exhibition also highlights of one of history’s most ambitious architectural projects, conceived by the Bolognese architect Giovanni Antonio Antolini: the famous Foro Bonaparte, which, although never realised, had a major influence on the transformation of Napoleonic Milan into a modern city inspired by the magnificence of antiquity. With this utopian and visionary undertaking, Milan aspired to become the new Rome, pursuing the great ideal dream of classicism. Equally fascinating will be the re-enactment of Napoleon’s coronation as King of Italy in Milan Cathedral, through the exhibition of the so-called Italian Honours: the cape, crown, sceptre, and other splendid objects used during the ceremony, all of which underwent major restoration by Intesa Sanpaolo for the 19th edition of “Restituzioni” in 2022.
Roberto Bizzocchi, Elisa Baccini, Fernando Mazzocca, Francesco Leone, Elena Lissoni, Charles-Eloi Vial, et al., Eterno e Visione: Roma e Milano Capitali del Neoclassicismo (Turin: Allemandi, 2025), 368 pages, ISBN: 978-8842227137, €39.
Exhibition | 1725: Native American Allies at the Court of Louis XV
1725: Native American Allies at the Court of Louis XV
1725: Des alliés amérindiens à la cour de Louis XV
Château de Versailles, 25 November 2025 — 3 May 2026
Curated by Jonas Musco, Paz Núñez-Regueiro, and Bertrand Rondot
In 1725, four Native American chiefs and a Native American woman from the Mississippi Valley were received in France as part of an unprecedented diplomatic mission. The event marked the climax of efforts by the French crown to build relationships with Indigenous nations in North America, amidst ongoing conflicts between European colonial powers and the Indigenous allies. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to explore the history and lives of the Native American nations of the Mississippi Valley in the 18th century, their connections with France, the extraordinary Atlantic crossing undertaken by their leaders, and their meeting with Louis XV, the royal court, and the capital.
The Indigenous Mississippi Valley in the 18th Century
The first section of the exhibition immerses visitors in the complex world of Native American societies of the Mississippi Valley at the time the French began exploring and settling the area. The encounter between these two civilizations soon led to a lasting alliance based on close diplomatic ties. The exhibition introduces the major Indigenous nations at the heart of this story through a contemporary map specially created for the show, alongside rare 18th-century maps. Some of these nations were already allied with the French through earlier treaties, notably reinforced in 1701 by the Great Peace of Montreal, a historic treaty exceptionally presented to the public.
Through a series of rare portraits—some of the only surviving from that period—a different image of Native societies emerges, far from the 19th-century Plains stereotypes. The selection of artefacts includes a remarkable feathered headdress made in the 18th century for a high-ranking chief, likely the oldest of this type known in the world. The presentation continues with a glimpse into their seasonal way of life, alternating between farming and hunting. Their relationship with the living world is also spiritual, involving social connections with more-than-human beings, such as the thunderbirds—powerful spirits often depicted on hides presented to the French as diplomatic gifts.
The Founding of a French Colony: Louisiana
The second section focuses on the close ties developed between the French and their Indigenous allies after the founding of the Louisiana colony. A selection of objects illustrates the cultural blending that emerged in the early 18th century: war clubs decorated with fleur-de-lis, necklaces made of imported beads, and European knives sheated in Native-style scabbards. The most emblematic items are a peace pipe richly decorated with feathers and a painted hide depicting it.
In 1724, to strengthen the alliance, the Compagnie des Indes proposed inviting the Native leaders to the court of young Louis XV. Étienne Véniard de Bourgmont, commander of the Missouri post, contacted the Otoe, Osage, and Missouria nations—their responses, transcribed in diplomatic correspondence, will be featured in the exhibition—while the Illinois sent Chicagou, the Michigamea chief and conveyed the words of Mamantouensa, chief of the Kaskadia, through Jesuit missionary Nicolas Ignace de Beaubois.
Forming the delegation was not without difficulty. Several other nations planned to send representatives, but the shipwreck of the vessel meant to transport them to France discouraged many from continuing. Ultimately, the delegation consisted of four chiefs and the daughter of a Missouri chief. They set sail in the spring of 1725. From that moment, the delegates were treated as international ambassadors, and a document reveals they were served ‘at the captain’s table’, an honor reserved for elite guests.
The Delegation’s Reception at Court
The final section traces the steps of the Native American chiefs’ visit to France—Paris, Versailles, and Fontainebleau—and details the royal court’s diplomatic protocol for receiving foreign embassies. Thanks to invaluable accounts from the Mercure de France, we follow their movements: meetings with the directors of the Compagnie des Indes, the organizers of the journey, and with princes and princesses of the royal blood.
The exhibition highlights the audience granted by Louis XV to the chiefs on November 25, 1725, at Fontainebleau. This was the most symbolic moment of the visit, during which the chiefs gave speeches to the king, who responded with marked interest in his guests. After touring Versailles, Marly, and Trianon, the delegates were honored with an invitation to hunt alongside with the king at Fontainebleau. They gladly accepted and participated ‘in their own way’—on foot and armed with bows.
The exhibition pathway, punctuated with excerpts from the Mercure de France, presents gifts similar to those exchanged between the Native delegates, the king and the government: prestigious headdresses, bows, and a peace pipe for the Native visitors, and a gold medal and other precious artifacts for the French. Portraits of the main French figures and, for the first time in France, a portrait of a Miami Native American will bring this historic meeting to life.
The exhibition concludes with a reference to the ‘Danse des Sauvages’, a famous piece by Jean-Philippe Rameau added to his opera Les Indes galantes. Inspired by the dance of two Native chiefs at the Comédie-Italienne, this rarely discussed source of inspiration reveals the enduring cultural impact of the 1725 delegation in France.
A special visitor program will allow guests to hear from Native members of the exhibition’s scientific committee as they reflect on the modern-day relationship between their nations and France, echoing this long-shared history.
Curators
• Jonas Musco, Historian, Research Associate
• Paz Núñez-Regueiro, Chief Curator of Heritage, Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac
• Bertrand Rondot, Chief Curator of Heritage, Palace of Versailles
The exhibition is developed within the framework of the research project CRoyAN – Royal Collections of North America—coordinated by the musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac, in dialogue with four Native nations: the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Quapaw Nation, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, and the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. The exhibition is organized thanks to the patronage of The CORA Foundation. The exhibition is co-organized with the musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac.
Jonas Musco, Paz Núñez-Regueiro, and Bertrand Rondot, 1725: Des alliés amérindiens à la cour de Louis XV (Paris: Liénart, 2025), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-2359064766, €29.
New Book | Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery
Forthcoming from UNC Press:
John Garrison Marks, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington’s Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2026), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1469693521, $35.
How should we remember George Washington’s entanglement in slavery? Americans have argued over that question for nearly 250 years. More than any other Founding Father, Washington’s ties to slavery have vexed us. He enslaved more people than any of his fellow founders, yet he was the only one of them to emancipate the people he held in bondage. Since his death, Americans have grappled with this contradiction, shaping and reshaping our collective memory of Washington and slavery—along with our understanding of the nation.
In Thy Will Be Done, historian John Garrison Marks tells the story of Americans’ long, fraught struggle to come to terms with Washington’s legacy of slavery. He traces how politicians, abolitionists, educators, activists, Washington’s former slaves and their descendants, and others have remembered, forgotten, and manipulated slavery’s place in Washington’s story, and how they have wielded versions of that story in the political and cultural fights of their time. Marks shows how generational struggles over our collective memory of Washington and slavery have always been part of a bigger conversation about defining the United States and its people. As debates about the founders’ participation in the system of slavery continue to roil public discourse, Marks shows with new clarity that Americans have never collectively reconciled Washington’s conflicted legacy. By truly grappling with Washington’s role as enslaver and emancipator, we may come to better understand the nation and ourselves.
John Garrison Marks is a historian, writer, and author of Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery.
New Book | Bernardo de Gálvez
The first edition appeared in 2018; the paperback edition was just released from UNC Press:
Gonzalo Quintero Saravia, Bernardo de Gálvez: Spanish Hero of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2026), 616 pages, ISBN: 978-1469696126, $38.
Although Spain was never a formal ally of the United States during the American Revolution, its entry into the war definitively tipped the balance against Britain. Led by Bernardo de Gálvez, supreme commander of the Spanish forces in North America, their military campaigns against British settlements on the Mississippi River—and later against Mobile and Pensacola—were crucial in preventing Britain from concentrating all its North American military and naval forces on the fight against George Washington’s Continental army. In this first comprehensive biography of Gálvez (1746–1786), Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia assesses the commander’s considerable historical impact and expands our understanding of Spain’s contribution to the war.
A man of both empire and the Enlightenment, as viceroy of New Spain (1785–86), Gálvez was also pivotal in the design and implementation of Spanish colonial reforms, which included the reorganization of Spain’s Northern Frontier that brought peace to the region for the duration of the Spanish presence in North America. Extensively researched through Spanish, Mexican, and US archives, Quintero Saravia’s portrait of Gálvez reveals him as central to the histories of the Revolution and late eighteenth-century America and offers a reinterpretation of the international factors involved in the American War for Independence.
Gonzalo M. Quintero Saravia, SJD, PhD, is the author of several books on eighteenth-century Spanish American history and a former fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.
Exhibition | Longing: Painting from the Pahari Kingdoms
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
Exhibition | Of the Hills: Pahari Paintings
Attributed to an artist from the generation (ca. 1725–ca. 1785) after Nainsukh and Manaku, Krishna and His Family Admire a Solar Eclipse, from a Bhagavata Purana (Ancient Tales of the Lord), canto 10.82 (detail); India, Himachal Pradesh state, 1775–80; opaque watercolor on paper (Washington DC: National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Collection, Purchase from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, F2017.13.5).
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Opening this spring at the National Museum of Asian Art:
Of the Hills: Pahari Paintings from India’s Himalayan Kingdoms
National Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC, 18 April — 26 July 2026
Curated by Debra Diamond
The tallest mountains on earth rise from the plains of northern India in a series of steep hills, snowy peaks, and narrow valleys. From the same Himalayan region arose some of the world’s most beautiful—yet least understood—works of art. Discover the extraordinary beauty and unique history of paintings made for Hindu kings in India’s Pahari (hill) region between the 1620s and 1830s. Pahari artists worked in radically different styles ranging from lyrical and naturalistic to boldly colored and abstracted. Of the Hills: Pahari Paintings from India’s Himalayan Kingdoms illuminates new scholarship on the collaborative artist communities in which most painters worked. Learn about the political, cultural, and religious contexts of these forty-eight exquisite works, and look closely to enter a world of fine detail that delights and astounds.
The exhibition celebrates the remarkable collection of Pahari paintings the museum acquired from renowned art historian Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim. Some of these artworks have never been exhibited publicly before. We’ve brought these rare pieces into conversation with our historic collections and paintings on loan from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Of the Hills is accompanied by the major publication Pahari Paintings: Art and Stories and runs concurrently with Pahari exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Art Museum.
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
Exhibition | Epic of the Northwest Himalayas: Pahari Paintings
Rama and Lakshmana with the sage Vishvamitra, from the ‘Shangri’ Ramayana, ca. 1700, Northern India, Pahari kingdoms, gum tempera and ink on paper; page: 22 × 32 cm (Washington, DC: National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection—Funds provided by the Friends of the National Museum of Asian Art, S2018.1.9).
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Opening this spring at The Cleveland Museum of Art:
Epic of the Northwest Himalayas: Pahari Paintings from the ‘Shangri’ Ramayana
The Cleveland Museum of Art, 19 April — 16 August 2026
Curated by Sonya Rhie Mace
Forty paintings are reunited from a widely dispersed pictorial series that presents the story of the Hindu divine hero Rama. The timeless tale, more than 2,000 years old, remains a cultural force across southern Asia. Potent themes of righteousness, vengeance, and loyalty are explored through dramatic episodes in which demons are vanquished, lovers are separated, and monkeys, bears, and a man-eagle save the day. Magic abounds, and emotions fly with warriors’ arrows. Three digital stations present more than 100 gently animated images of paintings from multiple collections reassembled into their original episodic sequences.
Created with blazing colors for a royal collection around 1700, the ‘Shangri’ Ramayana has been a beloved and enigmatic series among scholars and collectors for the past century. New evidence from previously unpublished paintings reveals many more artistic styles and triple the number of total folios than have been previously recognized. It argues in favor of a collaborative model of production involving artists from across the alpine region of Pahari India, which straddles the present-day state of Himachal Pradesh and that of Jammu and Kashmir. Twelve lenders generously contributed to this focused exhibition. The unbound pictorial series began to be divided as early as the 1760s, suggesting that its spiritual merit was intended to be shared among multiple owners. Its title derives from the kingdom of Shangri, where a member of the royal family sold his 275 folios to a dealer in Delhi, beginning in 1962. Hundreds more paintings, however, have been in other royal collections.
The exhibition celebrates the publication of the Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim Collection of Pahari paintings, which includes three pages of the ‘Shangri’ Ramayana that are on view and contextualized in Epic of the Northwest Himalayas. The exhibition runs concurrently with Pahari exhibitions at the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C. and the Cincinnati Art Museum.
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
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