Curatorial Tour of Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting

The Americas Chapter is delighted to invite you to a curatorial tour of Indian Skies: The Howard Hodgkin Collection of Indian Court Painting with Dr. Navina Najat Haidar, Nasser Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah Curator in Charge of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Tuesday, June 4 at 3:30pm

Sir Howard Hodgkin CH CBE (1932-2017), whose abstract paintings exhibit his keen eye for color, assembled a vibrant collection of 122 Indian paintings over sixty years. To celebrate The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s acquisition of 84 works in 2022, the collection is shown with the 38 sheets remaining in Howard Hodgkin Indian Collection Trust. From narrative scenes of the Mughal, Deccani, Rajput and Pahari Courts to refined portraits of princes to a wide array of depictions of elephants, the collection allows fresh insights into painting practices in India from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and their appeal to a painter of the twentieth.

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Dr. Navina Najat Haidar is Nasser Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah Curator in Charge of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where she has been a curator since 1999. As organizer of exhibitions such as Sultans of Deccan India, 1500–1700: Opulence and Fantasy (2015) and the coordinator of the reinstallation of the New Islamic Galleries, Dr. Haidar has brought attention to the contributions of Islamic art to the wider culture.

Image: Elephant and Keeper, India, Mughal, ca. 1650-60. Howard Hodgkin Collection (2022.187)