The Deccan, India's vast central plateau region, has been a
cultural crossroads for millennia. Here, cultural legacies—from
northern and southern India and beyond—have always met and
blended, resulting in a remarkable array of artistic traditions.
India's Middle Ground: Art of the Deccan gathers together works
from the Museum's collection to showcase the region's artistic,
cultural, and religious diversity. From puppets and painted
storyboards used to narrate the great Hindu epics, to
woodcarvings and gold-highlighted iconic paintings of deities
and devotees, to refined manuscripts and metalwork from the
area's Islamic kingdoms, to glass portraits influenced by the
colonial European presence, this installation is a sampling of
the Deccan's unique artistic fare: Indian fusion. The
installation includes twenty-seven works of various media dating
from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries.Curators
John Henry Rice • Graduate Research Assistant Darielle Mason •
The Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and