MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON, TO OPEN TWO NEW GALLERIES IN DECEMBER

FOR PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURE FROM INDIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Gems of Rajput Painting to Debut as Inaugural Exhibition in Asian Paintings Gallery

Two new galleries are set to open at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), this month. One will celebrate rare sculptural works from India and neighboring countries (South Asia) and Southeast Asia. The other will showcase rotations of the rich painting traditions of India, Korea, the Himalayas, and Persia beginning with an important collection of Indian works in the exhibition Gems of Rajput Painting. The two new galleries will reflect a broad range of cultures—from Iran to the west and Indonesia to the east, and from the Himalayas to the north and Sri Lanka to the south—reinforcing the global nature of the MFA’s encyclopedic collection. Highlights include important Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain works, such as a rare 5th-century painted fragment featuring Buddha’s half-brother, Nanda, from the caves in

Ajanta, a UNESCO World Heritage site in central India—the only known work to have left Ajanta—and an elaborately carved 11thcentury sculpture of the elephant-headed Hindu god of good fortune, Ganesh. The new galleries are located on Level 1 near theMuseum’s Huntington Avenue Entrance.

Some 120 works in the South Asian and Southeast Asian Sculpture Gallery will highlight the artistic traditions of India and the surrounding South Asian countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, as well as Southeast Asia, which includes Indonesia,Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, and Vietnam. In addition, the gallery will emphasize the important cultural exchange that took placebetween the two geographic regions during the course of two millennia. Many of the objects on view have recently been conserved and will be displayed in new cases and on new mounts to enhance their presentation.

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