PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Drawing together a diverse range of paintings and sculptures from across the subcontinent, Ragas and Rajas: Musical Imagery of Courtly India explores the confluence of sight and sound, king and god throughout a millennium of artistic vision in India. Artists also imagined the modes of classical Indian music (ragas) as vivid scenes from an idealized world inhabited by human and divine courtiers. These images were paired with poetry and organized into sets called ragamalas (garlands of ragas). Made exclusively for India’s royal patrons, ragamalas blend music, poetry, and painting in a unique synthesis of aesthetic experiences. The exhibition will be on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through November 18th, 2009.

As the visual arts of India reveal, music played a central role in the lives of rajas (rulers) and their retinues. Depictions of royal assemblies invariably include musicians, as do scenes of festivals and celebrations for birth or marriage. Drums and horns rallied troops and announced the arrival of the raja’s army, as shown in paintings from across the region. Music was (and is still today) central to the worship, identities, and stories of supreme royalty—the Hindu gods. In the idyllic “miniature” painting “The Gods Sing and Dance for Shiva and Parvati” (1780-1790), the entertainment of the divine court echoes that of the earthly. For some deities, music-making is inseparable from their identities: Krishna enchants devotees with his flute; Shiva plays his two-headed drum as he dances the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction.

“The human and the divine really overlap in the visual arts of India,” said exhibition organizer Yael Rice, Assistant Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art. “For both rajas and gods, musical performance is portrayed as a source not only of pleasure, but also of earthly and heavenly power.”

Museum History

In 1876, the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (as it was originally titled) was chartered with a goal of establishing “a Museum of Art, in all its branches and technical application, and with a special view to the development of the art and textile industries of the state.” The founders envisioned a museum along the lines of the recently completed South Kensington Museum in London (today known as the Victoria and Albert Museum), but different in having an active school as a close adjunct—where creative craftsmen could be trained for the growing industries of the United States.

On May 10, 1877, exactly one year after the inauguration of the Centennial Exposition, Memorial Hall reopened as a permanent museum. The Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art opened on December 17, 1877, in a separate location at 312 North Broad Street, with an entering class of 100 students. The school’s growing enrollment necessitated a series of moves over the next 15 years to larger quarters, until finally on September 10, 1893, classes opened in a new building at Broad and Pine Streets designed by John Haviland in the Greek Revival style. All students received instruction in drawing, painting, and modeling, with specialized courses in textiles, furniture design, pottery, wood carving, metalwork, and other crafts.

Indian Art Ideas

(www.indianartideas.com)