Britain to host major Indian arts event

The British Museum today unveiled a wide-ranging six-month programme of events next year exploring India, from its art and culture to environmental threats.

The London venue will host Indian Summer from May to October 2009.

The season will include exhibitions, installations, performances, lectures and film screenings.

Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur, from May 28 to August 23 2009, will focus on the distinctive style of court painting which flourished in Jodhpur, in Rajasthan, during the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries.

The exhibition will feature a loan of 55 works from the Mehrangarh Museum Trust in Jodhpur.

These paintings have never been seen in Europe before and are of exceptional quality, the museum said. There will be an admission charge.

British Museum Director, Neil MacGregor said he was grateful to the HSBC bank, which is sponsoring the event, for enabling it to go ahead.

He said: "There is an enduring fascination with the rich diversity of the art and culture of India....

"I am most grateful to HSBC for enabling us to present Indian Summer."

Stephen Green, Group Chairman HSBC Holdings plc, described India as a "major player in the world market".

India Landscape, running from May 2 to September 28 2009 will be free of charge in the museum's forecourt.

To complement the exhibition, the museum is collaborating with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, to create an Indian-themed landscape on the museum's west lawn.

The landscape will present a section through the immensely diverse habitats of the Indian subcontinent, taking visitors on a journey from the mountainous environment of the Himalayas, through a temperate region and ending in a sub-tropical zone centred on a pool filled with lotus flowers.

The landscape will highlight the significance of plant use in Indian culture - as food, medicine and in trade and the way plants such as chillies, native to South America, have travelled.

The dramatic consequences of habitat destruction in the subcontinent will also be addressed, the museum said.

The landscape is the second in a series of five planned collaborations with Kew.