Coordinator of Family, Teen, and Multigenerational Learning Mary Ann Bonet invites visitors to immerse themselves in sights and sounds from the Islamic world and India!

In the first of two posts related to the exhibition Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations, Kurt Behrendt discusses a preparatory trip he made to Buddhist sites in North India.

India: Art and Culture 1300–1900 is a tribute to the rich and varied culture of India as represented in the later art of the subcontinent, dating from the fourteenth through the nineteenth century. Comprehensive in its conceptual framework, this presentation of three hundred thirty-three works brings together masterpieces of the sacred and court traditions and embraces as well the urban, folk, and tribal heritage. This volume, which is divided into five sections, opens with the bronze sculptures, ritual objects, and temple hangings of the classical Hindu tradition of the south. The vivid and lively art of rural India, which provides an aesthetic continuum that extends throughout these six centuries, is presented in the second section, Tribe and Village. This is followed by the highly refined and sophisticated art of the Muslim courts, which reached its greatest flowering in the exquisite illustrated manuscripts executed under the patronage of the Mughal emperors. In addition, the imperial ateliers of the Mughals produced works of technical brilliance in a wide array of decorative arts. Political alliances between the Mughals and the Hindu nobility in the north led to a fusion of Islamic and Hindu traditions that is explored in the bold, vigorous miniatures and dazzling weaponry of the Rajput world. And the art of the nineteenth century, produced under the Raj as Indian artists began to assimilate Western perspectives, is documented in the last section, the British Period. Stuart Cary Welch's pioneering scholarship in the field of Indian painting and the decorative arts is well known to art historians and museum-goers. In his sensitive, informative, and highly readable text he not only discusses each work from the point of view of a connoisseur but also presents the cultural and historical milieus in which each was created. India: Art and Culture 1300–1900 is the catalogue for the exhibition INDIA!, held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from September 14, 1985, through January 5, 1986, the most extensive survey of Indian art ever assembled by a museum in the United States.

As Buddhism spread out from north India, the place of its origin in the sixth century BC, the core ideas of this great religious tradition were often expressed through images. This Bulletin and the exhibition it accompanies, "Tibet and India: Buddhist Traditions and Transformations," focus on Indian and Tibetan Buddhist art of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a period that witnessed both the end of the rich north Indian Buddhist tradition and the beginning of popular Buddhist practice in Tibet. At this critical juncture in Buddhist history, a number of Tibetan monks traveled down out of the Himalayas to study at the famed monasteries of north India, where many also set about translating the vast corpus of Buddhist texts. As they visited these centers of scholarship and the pilgrimage sites associated with the Buddha's life, the monks encountered refined works of art—from complex stone carvings to delicately illustrated palm-leaf manuscripts—made by workshops that had been active for more than 1,400 years. These profound works of religious art and the Tibetan images that followed them help shed light on how the Tibetans received and transformed the north Indian image-making tradition.

Associate Conservator Yael Rosenfield details two Islamic textile fragments in the exhibition Jerusalem 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven and discusses India's lively textile-producing cottage industry.

Senior Research Assistant Courtney A. Stewart discusses the fascinating histories of several pieces of jewelry on view in the exhibition Treasures from India: Jewels from The Al-Thani Collection.

India's rich heritage of jeweled artistry is expressed in extravagant and opulent creations that range from ornaments for every part of the body to ceremonial court objects such as boxes, daggers, and thrones. Treasures from India presents more than sixty iconic works from the renowned Al-Thani collection, including pieces created for the imperial Mughals in the seventeenth century, others made for the nizams of Hyderabad and the maharajas of the Rajput courts from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, Indian-inspired jewelry fashioned by Cartier and other Western firms, and contemporary designs. The lucid text discusses the significance of these objects within the history of Indian jeweled arts, demonstrating how they stand among the highest expressions of Indian culture.

Court painting, both devotional and secular, has a long history in India and has inspired artists from diverse global traditions. This Bulletin features more than fifty stunning examples of Indian court painting by Mughal, Deccani, Rajasthani, and Pahari artists all from the former collection of British painter Howard Hodgkin (1932–2017). The works featured include stunning portraits, beautifully detailed text illustrations, studies of the natural world, and devotional subjects. Authors explore Hodgkins’s interest in these works and the relationship between his collecting and artistic practice while also providing detailed discussions of individual styles of the Indian courts and the vibrant exchange across their kingdoms from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.

A pioneering study of the emergence of Buddhist art in southern India, featuring vibrant photography of rare works, many published here for the first time Named for two primary motifs in Buddhist art, the sacred bodhi tree and the protective snake, Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India is the first publication to foreground devotional works produced in the Deccan from 200 BCE to 400 CE. Unlike traditional narratives, which focus on northern India (where the Buddha was born, taught, and died), this groundbreaking book presents Buddhist art from monastic sites in the south. Long neglected, this is among the earliest surviving bodies of Buddhist art, and among the most sublimely beautiful. An international team of researchers contributes new scholarship on the sculptural and devotional art associated with Buddhism, and masterpieces from recently excavated Buddhist sites are published here for the first time—including Kanaganahalli and Phanigiri, the most important new discoveries in a generation. With its exploration of Buddhism’s emergence in southern India, as well as of India’s deep commercial and cultural engagement with the Hellenized and Roman worlds, this definitive study expands our understanding of the origins of Buddhist art itself.