Birds of India and new found lands

New Delhi: To take forward its legacy of collaborations with stellar institutions such as The Wallace Collection (London), the National Gallery of Modern Art (Mumbai), The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (New Delhi), Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi (Chandigarh), and Jawahar Kala Kendra (Jaipur), and following the resounding success of Birds of India: Company Paintings c. […]

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New Delhi: To take forward its legacy of collaborations with stellar institutions such as The Wallace Collection (London), the National Gallery of Modern Art (Mumbai), The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (New Delhi), Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi (Chandigarh), and Jawahar Kala Kendra (Jaipur), and following the resounding success of Birds of India: Company Paintings c. 1800 to 1835, and New Found Lands: The Indian Landscape from Empire to Freedom, DAG announces the opening of these two historical exhibitions at Dr Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum in Mumbai this month.

Curated by Dr Giles Tillotson, Senior Vice-President, Exhibitions and Publications, both exhibitions collectively showcase art from the DAG collection across 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Premiering on 27 November 2021, the exhibitions will welcome visitors at Mumbai’s oldest museum, an institution dedicated to excellence in cultural education through exhibitions and unique visual and intellectual media, until 16 February 2022 embarking a fresh public-private dialogue in the world of art.

While Birds of India, the first-ever exhibition in the country dedicated to an extraordinary selection of Company Paintings of Indian birds, combines the delicacy and details of Mughal atelier-trained artists with the refinement and rationalization of European art featuring works that signify a hybrid Indian art of rare and exceptional beauty, a style unique to the Indian subcontinent whose patronage was almost entirely British, New Found Lands explores landscape painting in India over a period of two hundred years, from 1780 to 1980, unfolding a visual story that moves from an imposed colonial gaze, through Indian accommodation and adjustment, to rejection, and the profusion of new forms of imagery, rooted in the land.

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