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Art from India Comes to The de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University
SANTA CLARA, Calif.-(Business Wire)-March 21, 2007 - Watercolors, drawings, and sculpture spanning 400 years of Indian history will be on view at SCU's de Saisset Museum. The exhibit, "Miniature Worlds: Art from India," opens April 10. Drawn from the extensive permanent collection of The Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, Mass., the exhibition illuminates various forms of Indic media from the 15th to the 19th centuries, as well as aspects of its religion and history.
Two major Indian painting traditions, Rajput and Mughal, are represented in the watercolors on display. Rajput paintings focus on religious themes and are painted in a native style with bold, flat colors. These earliest Indian paintings illustrate sacred Jain and Hindu texts. The establishment of the Mughal dynasty in 1526 ushered in new themes, particularly history painting and portraiture. Mughal paintings were composed by artists affiliated with the court and reflect a style based on the Persian miniature painting tradition.
The exhibition also includes three-dimensional works, such as "Dancing Ganesha," a sculpture executed in the first half of the 20th century.
The companion exhibition "Sacred Images: Deities and Marriages in Mithila Painting" will showcase the contemporary folk paintings created by women in the Mithila region of Bihar, India. From the 14th century, women in this region have painted gods, goddesses, and icons of fertility on the walls of their homes. In the late 1960s they began transferring their paintings to paper. Since then, many women—and a few men—have dramatically expanded the subjects and styles in their painting.
A free Community Day event, co-sponsored by the India Community Center and featuring entertainment, food, and hands-on art activities will be from noon to 5 p.m. April 21.
Two free lectures—one by Dr. Mary-Ann Milford on the subject of Indian miniature painting at 6 p.m. May 2 and one by Malini Bakshi and David L. Szanton on the Mithila painting tradition at 6 p.m. April 18—will also be presented in conjunction with the exhibition.
All of the works in "Miniature Worlds" are from the Leland C. and Paula Wyman Collection at The Art Complex Museum, an extraordinary collection of 300 paintings purchased in the late 1960s. The exhibition is curated by Alice R. M. Hyland, Ph.D., of Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., in collaboration with Catherine Mayes, senior curator at The Art Complex Museum. "Miniature Worlds" is toured by ExhibitsUSA. The exhibition is a program of ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance and The National Endowment of the Arts.
The "Sacred Images" exhibition is organized by PinkMango: The Indian Artisan and the Ethnic Arts Foundation and is guest curated by Malini Bakshi and David Szanton.
About the de Saisset Museum
The de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University is the South Bay's free museum of art and history. The museum is one of only two museums in the South Bay accredited by the American Association of Museums. The de Saisset Museum supports SCU's goal of educating the whole person through diverse exhibitions, collections, and educational programs.
About Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California's Silicon Valley, offers its 8,377 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, and engineering, plus master's and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. master's universities, California's oldest operating higher-education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu.
