MEETING GOD:
Elements of Hindu Devotion

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
New York City, New York
September 8, 2001 - March 31, 2002

DEITIES ON PARADE AND EPHEMERA

Through textiles, instruments, and photographs, Deities on Parade explores Hinduism's religious festivals. At least once a year, Hindu communities celebrate the Divine by parading sacred images from their temples and shrines through the streets. The image's energy blesses the region surrounding the temple, giving devotees an opportunity to have a special darshan, or communion, with the deity. These processions also allow the elderly and infirm, who might not be able to visit the temple, to view and be blessed by the Divine. This section focuses on a large projection video of a Shiva procession at the Kapalishwara Temple in Mylapore, Chennai, elaborating on the masses of devotees crowded together for darshan with the deity. Photographs and a shrine of processional deities from Himachal Pradesh are complemented by processional textiles and trumpets from the museum's collections.

Hindus embellish festivals and holy days by building elaborate, but temporary, temples and shrines to honor different deities. Ephemeral Shrines and Images features statues of deities, textiles, offerings, photographs, and a re-created shrine to Ganesha, the Remover of Obstacles, to whom almost all Hindus pray at the beginning of every endeavor. On display from the Museum's collection is a figure of the Goddess, one of the many forms of Parvati the Supreme Goddess. A nearby shrine shows the way in which Gauri would be worshipped in Rajasthan. Within this exhibition, Ingrid van Shipley, an Indian New Yorker, has decorated the walls using traditional forms and motifs the way women in India decorate streets and courtyards with sacred ephemeral designs.