If you need a quick escape from the hustle and bustle of this holiday season, journey to India via our current exhibition Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur. Here, you can discover unknown facets of India's exceptional artistic achievements. Revel in the exploits of the Hindu deities Rama and Krishna. Learn to live like a king in scenes of maharajas relaxing in their palace-gardens. Contemplate the origins of the cosmos and the nature of the Absolute.

These extraordinary paintings were selected from the thousands of works in the royal collection of the Mehrangarh Museum Trust in northern India. None of them has been publicly seen for centuries, since the time they were created for the entertainment and edification of the imperial court. These works reveal that royal artists in Jodhpur repeatedly developed unique styles and imagery to suit their dramatically different historical periods. In the eighteenth century artists depicted glorious gardens in opulent desert palaces; later they created monumental landscapes worthy of Krishna himself. Interests shifted from earthly pursuits to cosmic questions in the nineteenth century. Artists conveyed profound metaphysical conceptions through the use of shimmering expanses of gold and silver, hallucinatory juxtapositions of color, and explorations of the Absolute. To put it quite simply, these paintings are "out of this world!"

Step back in time and into the royal court of a maharaja in Garden and Cosmos, now on view through January 4, 2009.

We hope to see you in the Galleries or online again soon.
Julian Raby
Director