22 Exhibitions


LONGING Painting from the Pahari Kingdoms of the Northwest Himalayas


Featuring more than 40 works of art, Longing: Painting from the Pahari Kingdoms of the Northwest Himalayas presents colourful 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. Te paintings were often given as gifts between regional nobility, families and political allies, creating large networks of artistic exchange. Organised thematically,


the exhibition encourages visitors to experience art as multisensory. Select paintings are 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. Influenced by the region’s culture and politics, the artworks portray longing in several ways, including through paintings of devotees who long to connect with the divine, individuals and couples who yearn for romance, and rulers and noblemen who longed to be at the centre of political control. Te exhibition is part of a


larger research project connecting the South Asian art collections at the Cincinnati Art Museum, the


DIVINE COLOUR Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal


Vivid prints of divinities are part of daily life for Hindus in India and around the world, used for worship in homes, factories, and offices, as well as for adornment on cars, calendars, computers, and shop counters. Te art world has historically overlooked these images, often called ‘calendar art’, because they are inexpensive and mass-produced. However, they have a rich and fascinating history in and influence on Indian art, religion, and society. Tis exhibition explores


Krishna playing with the gopis in the Yamuna, circa 1770, India, Himachal Pradesh, Nurpur, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, Cleveland Museum of Art, purchase and partial gift from the Catherine and Ralph Benkaim Collection, Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund


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


• Until 7 June, Cincinnati Art Museum, cincinnatiartmuseum.org


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 popular prints’ origins and powerful impacts. When Indian artists encountered the new printmaking technology of lithography in 19th-century Calcutta (today Kolkata), then the capital of British India, they used it to reinvent devotional art. Depictions of Hindu gods became more realistic, colourful, and accessible than ever before. Shrines in homes across the economic spectrum came to host these images, mixed and matched according to a family’s taste. Tough the lithographs of Hindu gods created by Bengali artists were not expensive, they were valuable in other senses. Sold in the bustling bazaars of Calcutta where presses competed to attract customers, the prints served an important role in home worship, satisfied the artistic sensibilities of a Bengali society that had absorbed European fine art values, and helped to spread new political ideas. Te


IN BLOOM How Plants Changed Our World


Te Oxford Botanical Garden is the oldest example in the UK, founded in 1621 by Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby. Originally established a ‘physic garden’ to grow medicinal plants for teaching and research at the University of Oxford. While many of the original plantings were European medicinal herbs, 17th-century gardens quickly began importing plants from wider areas as trade routes expanded, including Asia and beyond. One example is the import


of Chinese tea plants first to India, then Ceylon (Sri Lanka) with botanical samples and drawing being sent to the UK. In the 1840s, Scottish botanist Robert Fortune, trained in botanical gardens, travelled to China to collect plants for the Horticultural Society, later acting for the East India Company. He collected tea seeds and plants, and, importantly, documented that green and black teas came from the same plant. Te Ashmolean itself owes


its existence to two obsessive gardeners who set out to


ASIAN ART | MARCH 2026 |


‘collect the world’. In the 17th century, John Tradescant the Elder and the Younger, gardeners to royalty and aristocracy, travelled to the Low Countries, France, Russia and North America, gathering plants, seeds, specimens and intriguing objects that later formed the Ashmolean’s founding collection. Tis history is explored at


the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford as it traces the journeys that some of Britain’s most familiar blooms and their journey to arrive in the UK. Featuring more than 100 artworks,


including botanical paintings and drawings, historical curiosities, and new work by contemporary artists, the exhibition follows the passion and ingenuity of early plant explorers and the networks that influenced science, global trade and consumption. Discovering how plants changed the world and left a legacy that still shapes our environments, food and drink, and house gardens today. Many of our most beloved


Wardian case, circa 1870, wood and glass, 120 x 80 x 60 cm, The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew


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species of plants and flowers, including tulips, roses, orchids and camellias, reached Britain through the networks of empire linking Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Seeds, dried specimens and living plants travelled along the same maritime and commercial routes that transported people and goods, a movement that often depended on the expertise of local people that went unrecorded in Western accounts. Some arrivals triggered


intense public interest. Tulips fuelled the Dutch speculative bubble known as


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‘tulipomania’ which, at its height in the 1630s, saw rare tulip bulbs being sold at the cost of a canal-side house. Ferns, orchids and rhododendrons too inspired later Victorian collecting frenzies. Other plants became woven into everyday life. Tea, now integral to British identity, grew into a powerful commodity whose cultivation and trade had far-reaching economic and political effects. Another innovation


featured in the exhibition is the ‘Wardian Case’, a revolutionary sealed glass container, developed by Nathaniel Ward in the 1840s. Tis ingeniously simple solution facilitated long- distance plant transport and made it possible for living specimens to survive long voyages, encouraging the mass movement of plants across the world. Tis transportation of plants came with significant costs to colonised and indigenous peoples. As European demand for


profitable and desirable species grew, collecting and cultivation began to reshape


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Tea jars for black (Bohea) and green tea, Worcester Pottery Factories, 1775-80, steatitic porcelain, height 13.2 cm, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford


local ecologies and economies. In many regions, land was reorganised for export crops and large single-species plantations, creating ‘monocultures’ that replaced local biodiversity and made communities more vulnerable to environmental and economic shocks. Britain’s role in the opium trade, which contributed directly to the Opium Wars (1839-60), was a notoriously exploitative chapter in the nation’s history. Te global spread of tea and other cash


crops shows how botanical collecting, commerce and imperial ambition often carried consequences beyond the plants themselves. In Bloom returns to this


origin point, examining how plants were acquired, classified and circulated in the 17th century, and how the wish to grow and understand them shaped knowledge and culture.


• 19 March to 16 August, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, ashmolean.org


• Catalogue available


Ganesha, printed by Chore Bagan Art Studio, published by Amar Nath Shaha, circa 1895-1900, lithograph, Mashall H Gould Fund


exhibition also considers how lithography gave these artists, who produced thousands of prints that travelled quickly across the nation, a means to change not just devotional but also artistic, political, and social life. A highlight of the


exhibition is the MFA’s collection of 38, 19th-


century, lithographs from Calcutta, it is the first of its kind in the US, featuring more than 100 objects, including other prints, paintings, sculpture, and textiles from the museum’s South Asian collection and select loans.


• Until 31 May, MFA Boston, mfa.org


WAT


Robert Fo Tea from


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