Yoga: The Art of Transformation
October 19, 2013–January 26, 2014 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Future Exhibitions

Yoga: The Art of Transformation

October 19, 2013–January 26, 2014
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Through masterpieces of Indian sculpture and painting, Yoga: The Art of Transformation explores yoga’s goals; its Hindu as well as Buddhist, Jain, and Sufi manifestations; its means of transforming body and consciousness; and its profound philosophical foundations. The first exhibition to present this leitmotif of Indian visual culture, it also examines the roles that yogis and yoginis played in Indian society over two thousand years.

Yoga includes more than 120 works dating from the third to the early twentieth century. Temple sculptures, devotional icons, illustrated manuscripts, and court paintings—as well as colonial and early modern photographs, books, and films—illuminate yoga’s central tenets and its obscured histories.

The exhibition borrows from twenty-five museums and private collections in India, Europe, and the United States. Highlights include an installation that reunites for the first time three monumental stone yogini goddesses from a tenth-century Chola temple; ten folios from the first illustrated compilation of asanas (yogic postures), made for a Mughal emperor in 1602, which have never before been exhibited together; and Thomas Edison’s Hindoo Fakir (1906), the first movie ever produced about India.

Yoga: The Art of Transformation is organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution. Generous support for the exhibition is provided by the Friends of Freer|Sackler, Whole Foods Market, Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne, and the Alec Baldwin Foundation.

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Strange and Wondrous: Prints of India from the Robert J. Del Bontà Collection

October 19, 2013–January 5, 2014
Sackler

As global travel boomed from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, Europeans and Americans became increasingly fascinated with Indian culture. Merchants, soldiers, and missionaries documented their visits to India and other foreign lands in illustrated accounts. Created using such techniques as engraving, aquatint, lithography, and photogravure, these subjects and designs were easily duplicated, and copies circulated widely. Publishers regularly edited, amended, or simply reprinted them in publications as varied as atlases, memoirs, and histories. The spread of these images led to broader knowledge and interest in Indian culture—but also to the creation and proliferation of negative stereotypes.

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The Nile and Ancient Egypt

Opens December 7; on view indefinitely
Freer

Beautiful and majestic, the mighty Nile River inspired ancient Egyptian artists and craftsmen for more than four millennia. The Nile and Ancient Egypt presents exceptional artifacts in the collection of the Freer Gallery. Made of glass, wood, and stone, these objects illuminate the important role water animals played in ancient Egyptian religion and concepts of the afterlife. Other highlights include a masterfully rendered pharaonic head from the third millennium BCE and a selection of extraordinary glass decorated with wave patterns that recall the Nile. Together they evoke the power and enduring fascination of this waterway.

In Focus: Ara Güler's Anatolia

December 14, 2013–May 4, 2014
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Ara Güler, the “Eye of Istanbul,” is famous for his iconic snapshots of the city in the 1950s and '60s. But with an archive of more than 800,000 photographs, Güler's body of work contains far more than these emblematic images. In December 2013, the Freer and Sackler Galleries will open an exhibition of never-before-shown works by the legendary photographer. Curated by Johns Hopkins University students in partnership with the museums, the installation will examine Güler's definition of himself as a photojournalist through the presentation of his photographs.

Featured are photographs of medieval Seljuk and Armenian buildings that Güler took in 1965. The exhibition therefore brings images of important Anatolian monuments to an American audience, highlighting Turkey's cultural history. Beyond appreciating their subject matter, the display asks visitors to think critically about the way images were created. Pushing the boundaries of traditional curatorial practice, this exhibition guides viewers into a critical debate about photography: documentation versus art.