India: South Asian Paintings from the San Diego Museum of Art brought small, intricately detailed works dating from the 15th to the 19th century to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville.
Curated by Ladan Akbarnia, the exhibition was organised around two connected sections: The Throne, the Chase and the Heart and Elephant in the Room.
Court, hunting and love
The first section examined how rulers and courtly life were represented through portraits, processions, hunting, falconry and scenes of love.
The paintings also revealed the collaborative nature of manuscript production. Workshops could bring together specialists in drawing, faces, landscapes, animals, architecture and illumination within a single work.
Their small scale rewarded close looking. Magnifying cards were provided so visitors could study the precision of the lines and the movement between idealised and more naturalistic representation.
The elephant as a cultural figure
The second section focused on elephants and their significance within South Asian visual and oral traditions.
They appeared as symbols of power and nobility as well as participants in courtly and hunting scenes.
The exhibition also highlighted the fragility of the works themselves. Because the watercolours are highly sensitive to light, individual paintings must be rotated and rested for long periods after display.
By presenting material from modern-day India and Pakistan within a broader art-historical context, the exhibition placed South Asian painting within a global visual history rather than at its margins.