At a time when material use was relativelyless sophisticated there is a similarity of ap-proach: an Ashokan carved edict with in-structions on ethical behaviour as opposedto ostentatious rituals, an Achaemenid Per-sian relief and a Mauryan pillar.

‘Moulding’ art At its core, the exhibition touches on thefundamental cultural phenomenon withinIndia, of its relative indiff��erence to or con-scious distance from the outside world. Overa 2,000-year period, the ‘outside’ may meanother castes and communities within India,with their attendant views on pollution.

This extended to haptic use and even theviewing of objects, and the knowledge or thegaze of the outside was discouraged if notforbidden.

Nevertheless, objects travelled, as a sub-

The exhibition, ‘India and the World:A History in Nine Stories’, cannot befaulted for the scale of its ambition.A collaboration between the British

Museum, London, CSMVS Mumbai, and theNational Museum, Delhi, this is the second,somewhat reduced edition of the show, thefi��rst being at CSMVS. Supported by the GettyFoundation and Tata Trust, it is the kind ofencyclopaedic exhibition the large universalmuseum aspires to — and may excel in.

At its core, it scrambles the national cultu-ral display to set up a relational dialogue bet-ween objects so that we are able to makehitherto unrecognised connections.Couched rather awkwardly in an oddlywinding layout at the National Museum, it isperhaps mostly appropriately described bySabyasachi Mukherjee as “an experiment”,to envision a “world narrative” for thosewho can never make it to the encyclopaedicmuseum.

Thematic visionAt some point, there is the realisation thatan exhibition can carry the viewer forwardin buoyant anticipation, or it can lag and fal-ter, as it tries to live up to its promise. ‘Indiaand the World’ in its discrete nine sectionshas both such moments, through fl��ashes ofbrilliant interconnection, and other some-what less successful links.

This ebb and fl��ow may be a refl��ection ofart production in diff��erent periods, of greateffl��orescence and relative mediocrity, andsuch a historic exhibition must deal withboth.

What is critical however is the kind of the-matic chapterisation under which the mate-rial has been organised. The story of Indianand simultaneous world art histories, theirdirect and lateral infl��uences, art as a docu-ment of trade, the making of the state reli-

gion, courtly taste and fashion are just a fewof the nine stories. Such a grid-like thematicarrangement requires sustained curatorialvision, and objects that through their gran-deur can sustain the meaning of the show.

The show does try to live up to this vision,notwithstanding the limitations of space,the low ceilings, the compulsion of display-ing small objects, and the disturbing multi-ple videos. The curatorial vision, therefore,and a broad art history thread is perhapsbest understood through single objects.Some of the readings are wonderfully lucid,such as of the earliest objects across geogra-phies, the hand axe and the vessel.

In a fascinating comparison, the primitivehand axe from Tanzania (400,000-800,000years old) and one from Chittor, Rajasthan(50,000 BC) are bound in a shared aestheticand utilitarian mould.

Some fascinating fi��nds of early cities —such as Harappan and Sumerian seals; Ha-rappan bricks; a decorative box from Ur,Iraq (about 2600 BC) with narrative imagesof city life; a charming Soul House fromEgypt (a small clay funerary object) — allpoint to man’s earliest attempts at makingthe image a bearer of meaning.

text to the exhibition emphasises. Harappanseals found 3,000 km away at Iraq is an in-stance.

That images travelled to strike unexpect-ed roots is beautifully illustrated by two por-traits of Jahangir, one of the emperor hold-ing an of Virgin Mary, and the other adrawing of Jahangir by Rembrandt who col-lected Mughal paintings. Here, we see Rem-brandt’s attempts to sketch in the Mughalminiature tradition.

Some of the more enjoyable bits are in themore cohesive sections. There is a wonder-ful interplay of the painted image in the sec-tion ‘Court Cultures’. Exquisite folios of theBaburnama are complemented by large-scale Deccani paintings of the 17th century,Safavid paintings, and a copy of a Ming scroll— linking three great centres of art in the 17thcentury.

In conclusion, the ‘moulding’ of art, root-ed as it is in the encyclopaedic museum, is acurious function, full of pitfalls and odd im-balances. Globalisation with its hyphenatedlinks, much like the contemporary biennalephenomenon, may fl��atten rather than en-hance cultural identity.

Globalism as a museum curatorial agendais pronounced in the newer entrants like theLouvre Abu Dhabi, with its historical, post-modern matrix of display. It depends on sin-gular objects that allow the eye to bounce off��heterogeneous cultures, styles and mate-rials, ending with a quick and somewhat un-committed incursion into the contempor-ary. The glittering chandelier by Ai Weiweiat the Louvre Abu Dhabi performs preciselysuch a function — it stuns even as it silenceswith its enormity. However, the question ofagency remains, on how a selective poly-phonic reading can enhance an understand-ing of art.

On a broad level is the question of how is-sues of identity are resolved when objectsare ‘de-centred’ from their national frame-work. Or perhaps there can be other curato-rial interventions — on the representing ofwomen across cultures, for instance, theirrole in art-making, their place as subjectsand consumers of art?

FRAMED

The life of travelling thingsThe ambitious India and the World exhibition comes to Delhi’s National Musuem

Object lesson Humped Bullfrom the Harappan period.Haryana State Archaeology andMuseums

Gayatri Sinhais an art critic and curator who, whilepreoccupied with her art websitewww.criticalcollective.in, is alsocontemplating a book

<>The show is appropriatelydescribed as “anexperiment”, to envision a“world narrative”