Pahari Paintings from India’s Himalayan Kingdoms across North America | Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and Cincinnati Art Museum
Of the Hills
Pahari Paintings from India’s Himalayan Kingdoms
April 18, 2026 – July 26, 2026
The tallest mountains on earth rise from the plains of northern India in a series of steep hills, snowy peaks, and narrow valleys. From the same Himalayan region arose some of the world’s most beautiful—yet least understood—works of art.
Discover the extraordinary beauty and unique history of paintings made for Hindu kings in India’s Pahari (hill) region between the 1620s and 1830s. Pahari artists worked in radically different styles ranging from lyrical and naturalistic to boldly colored and abstracted. Of the Hills: Pahari Paintings from India’s Himalayan Kingdoms illuminates new scholarship on the collaborative artist communities in which most painters worked. Learn about the political, cultural, and religious contexts of these forty-eight exquisite works, and look closely to enter a world of fine detail that delights and astounds.
Of the Hills celebrates the remarkable collection of Pahari paintings the museum acquired from renowned art historian Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim. Some of these artworks have never been exhibited publicly before. We’ve brought these rare pieces into conversation with our historic collections and paintings on loan from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
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Epic of the Northwest Himalayas
Pahari Paintings from the “‘Shangri’ Ramayana”
April 19, 2026 – August 16, 2026
Forty paintings are reunited from a widely dispersed pictorial series that presents the story of the Hindu divine hero Rama. The timeless tale, more than 2,000 years old, remains a cultural force across southern Asia. Potent themes of righteousness, vengeance, and loyalty are explored through dramatic episodes in which demons are vanquished, lovers are separated, and monkeys, bears, and a man-eagle save the day. Magic abounds, and emotions fly with warriors’ arrows. Three digital stations present more than 100 gently animated images of paintings from multiple collections reassembled into their original episodic sequences.
Created with blazing colors for a royal collection around 1700, the “Shangri” Ramayana has been a beloved and enigmatic series among scholars and collectors for the past century. New evidence from previously unpublished paintings reveals many more artistic styles and triple the number of total folios than have been previously recognized. It argues in favor of a collaborative model of production involving artists from across the alpine region of Pahari India, which straddles the present-day state of Himachal Pradesh and that of Jammu and Kashmir.
Twelve lenders generously contributed to this focused exhibition. The unbound pictorial series began to be divided as early as the 1760s, suggesting that its spiritual merit was intended to be shared among multiple owners. Its title derives from the kingdom of Shangri, where a member of the royal family sold his 275 folios to a dealer in Delhi, beginning in 1962. Hundreds more paintings, however, have been in other royal collections.
The exhibition celebrates the publication of the Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim Collection of Pahari paintings, which includes three pages of the “Shangri” Ramayana that are on view and contextualized in Epic of the Northwest Himalayas.
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Longing
Painting from the Pahari Kingdoms of the Northwest Himalayas
February 6, 2026 – June 7, 2026
Featuring more than forty works of art, Longing: Painting from the Pahari Kingdoms of the Northwest Himalayas displays colorful court paintings from present-day India dating between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. These small, portable paintings were produced for royal and noble patronage by artists practicing unique artistic techniques. Influenced by the region’s culture and politics, they portray moments of leisure, religious devotion, and political positioning, and were given as gifts between regional nobility, families, and political allies. Many paintings portray devotional acts meant to connect with the divine; others depict individuals and couples who yearn for romantic dalliance; still others portray rulers and noblemen who longed to be at the center of political control.
Organized around the theme of “longing,” the exhibition encourages visitors to experience art as multisensorial. Select paintings are paired with olfactory stations, touch opportunities, and musical soundscapes to heighten the work’s bhava (emotion or mood) and to encourage multiple ways to physically, intellectually, and emotionally connect with art.
Curated by Ainsley M. Cameron, PhD, Curator of South Asian Art, Islamic Art & Antiquities at the Cincinnati Art Museum.
