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MUSEUM GUIDE | CABANA TRAVEL | WORLD OF CABANA
In this series, we travel the world’s great museums – large and small – through the eyes and minds of Cabana Curators, asking one question: if you had only an hour to spare, what would you see? This week, Arnika Ahldag, Director of the Museum of Art & Photography in Bengaluru, talks Cabana through a selection of the museum’s most notable objects.
INTERVIEW BY EMMA BECQUE | CABANA TRAVEL | 23 JULY 2026
The Museum of Art & Photography in Bengaluru sits in a city better known for its start-ups than its museums, which is precisely what makes its presence unique. Built from a private collection assembled by its founder, who auctioned works to secure the land on which it now stands, the museum brings together objects that would rarely be shown side by side, from hand-painted Indian matchboxes from the 1990's to a botanical drawing of an Indian Rhododendron from the 1800s.
“There are a lot of cross connections of Indian craftsmanship across different mediums and eras,” says Arnika Ahldag, pointing to the way craft underpins much of India’s modernist movement, an area the museum continues to explore through exhibitions and research. Under her direction, the collection is shaped to tell stories of craft across areas often unexplored in Asia, allowing these relationships to emerge gradually within the space.
She shares eight of her favourite objects, explaining, in her own words, why each is so special for the collection and India today.
Rhododendron hodgsonii
Tab XV, The Rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya Author & Artist: Joseph Dalton Hooker, Editor: William Jackson Hooker, Lithographer: Walter Hood Fitch 1849 Hand-coloured lithograph. Exhibition: Paper Gardens: Art, Botany and Empire Botanicals; March 7, 2026- July 5, 2026.
"In 1847, the British botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker (son of then Kew director, William Jackson Hooker) was commissioned by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the East India Company to survey the flora of the eastern Himalayas and the Sikkim kingdom. Between 1848–50, he became the first British traveller to explore the interiors of Sikkim.
After his Sikkim expedition, Hooker sent back his drawings and notes of rhododendrons to England. There, his father and Walter Hood Fitch (the illustrator at Curtis’s Botanical Magazine) created finished lithographs and published the work as a book, The Rhododendrons of Sikkim–Himalaya, even before Hooker returned to England.
In the work, Hooker described 33 new rhododendron species—many named after prominent British botanists and wealthy patrons. This rhododendron is named after Brian Houghton Hodgson, a British naturalist living and working in Darjeeling and Nepal. The book would leave a lasting impression on the British gardening community and helped make the rhododendron wildly popular.
On his return in 1851, Hooker brought back close to 3,000 specimens from the northeast and Himalayan regions of the subcontinent. His expedition relied on the assistance of local communities of the region, including Lepcha plant collectors, and Gurkha and Bhotia soldiers.
Vishvaroopa
Unknown 19th century Jaipur, Rajasthan, India Opaque watercolour on paper H: 30 cm, W: 17.5 cm PTG.01071 Exhibition: Beneath the Turning Sky; Jan 17, 2026- Dec 3, 2028.
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna reveals his Vishwaroopa, the cosmic form encompassing all beings and realms, to Arjuna. This divine manifestation, described as terrifying, infinite, and radiant, is a powerful symbol of divine totality in Hindu thought. In these two works, Krishna (PTG.01071) and Rama (PTG.02336) are shown in Vishwaroopa form, with their bodies containing entire worlds – gods, sages, beasts, and elements.
Krishna’s blazing eyes, sun and moon, and hybrid limbs reflect a syncretic painting style blending Mughal, Rajasthani, Pahari, and South Indian idioms. Rama’s form, from early 19th-century Awadh-Jaipur tradition, is more serene, yet equally vast – affirming the same cosmic truth in a gentler register.
Clare Arni and Pushpamala photograph
"Pushpamala N. is a photo-performance artist based in Bangalore, India. From 2000 to 2004, she worked with British photojournalist Clare Arni to create Native Women of South India: Manners and Customs. The series focuses on idealised representations of women in Indian art of the historical periods, British colonial images of Indian women, and the more recent production of feminine stereotypes in contemporary visual culture.
Drawing from a range of sources, including historical paintings, colonial photography, regional cinema, and contemporary magazines, Pushpamala restages these images and reenacts the different roles that have been attributed to women. In reenacting these roles, the idea of “Indian women” as an ethnographic group is exposed as a stereotype no less fictive than the artist’s elaborate performance captured by British photojournalist Clare Arni’s camera."
Earth Carrier-2 Meera Mukherjee
c.1980 India Bronze H. 329 cm, W. 167 cm, D. 51 cm MAC.00665.
"A sculptor and researcher, Meera Mukherjee was an Indian Modern artist known for her bronze sculptures, which draw on the Dhokra craft techniques of indigenous metalworkers in central and eastern India. While her work was shaped by her immersive research and documentation of metal artisanship, particularly of the Gharua community in present-day Chhattisgarh, her subjects centre on humanist themes of labour, mass movements and quotidian activities observed in both rural and urban India.
Characterised by their rich surface textures and dynamic forms, her sculptures depict individuals or groups engaged in a range of activities, from weaving, rowing a boat or construction work, to protesting, playing an instrument, travelling in a bus or simply reflecting. Her large-scale works, in particular, influenced by primitive deified images, reflect Mukherjee’s preoccupation with the human spirit that is elevated through and beyond the mundane. She also worked with painting, terracotta, ceramic and kantha embroidery."
The Great Clown, Krishna Reddy
Krishna Reddy 1981 New York, United States of America Colour intaglio on paper Image: H. 99 cm, W. 74.5 cm; Paper: H. 124 cm, W. 91 cm Artist Proof MAC.01507.
"In the 1950s, Krishna Reddy, a printmaker and sculptor, found his unique vocabulary through experimentation in the graphic art studio, Atelier 17 in Paris. Perhaps influenced by his early learning at Santiniketan, Visva Bharati University, an alternative art school in Bengal that fostered co-learning, he actively explored forms with cohorts of practitioners throughout his life. A glimpse into his studio, featuring the materials and tools he used in printmaking and sculpting, reflects his continuous practice. Using the photographs taken by Bengaluru-based artist Ravi Kashi alongside Reddy’s artwork images, this exhibition offers a peek into the studio of Krishna Reddy.
One of Krishna Reddy’s most famous series was inspired by a 1978 visit to a circus with his daughter, Apu. Most of the prints in this series depict an abstract performer within a scaffold-like structure. Audience members are seated in concentric ovals with an aerial view of the ring, observing the clown suspended in space.
Jasminum heterophyllum (East Himalayan Yellow Jasmine)
Plantae Asiaticae Rariores Author: Nathaniel Wallich, Artist: Gorachand, Lithographer: Maxim Gauci 1830-32 Hand-coloured lithograph H. 53 cm, W. 35.7 cm Exhibition: Paper Gardens: Art, Botany and Empire Botanicals; March 7, 2026- July 5, 2026.
Gorachand- acknowledged by his contemporary British botanists as a master botanical artist - was employed with the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta, serving as its head artist at one point. He travelled on assignment for the garden, accompanying the superintendent, Nathaniel Wallich, on botanical surveys across India, Nepal and Burma. This folio comes from Wallich’s Plantae Asiaticae Rariories, to which Gorachand contributed close to 90 illustrations.
The Garden was amongst the most important botanical institutions in Asia. It was founded to advance commercial botany but evolved into a centre for research, plant acclimatisation, and exchange. The garden’s artists’ workshop—first established around 1793—operated throughout the 19th century. The work of its artists and lithographers formed the visual foundation of the garden’s scientific output and its many publications. The garden’s impressive roster included head artists Gorachand, Vishnupersaud, and Lutchman Singh, as well as Rajbullub, Bhagoban Chaterjee, Madhub Chandra, and Hurree Mohun.
Bhuta Mask
Title: Ceremonial Pilichamundi Mask Location/ Origin: Kerala, India Dated: 19th-20th century Medium: Bronze Dimension.
The Bhuta mask of Pilichamundi, also known as Pilichandi, is a spirit deity worshipped in the form of a tiger. The elaborate mask depicts the ferocious tiger spirit with an open mouth and stylised whiskers. It wears an ornate headgear/crown. The headgear consists of two concentric bands with naga (snake) and floral motifs. The third band consists of large alternating snake hoods and spikes.
Pilichamundi, also associated with Chamundi, the goddess from the puranic pantheon, is widely worshipped in the Tulu regions of coastal Karnataka. This mask belongs to the Bhuta/ Daiva cult, a spirit cult. It is worn by the impersonator during the invocation ritual of Kola alongside weapons and other attires which personify the deity.
Living Botanicals
Installation: February 28, 2026- February 28, 2027. Location: Subhedar Family Sculpture Courtyard, MAP.
Living Botanicals is a garden installation, a space where plants native to the subcontinent grow, change, and are cared for over time. Here, plants assert themselves as living subjects, enclosed by a pavilion that becomes both infrastructure and sanctuary. Architect Bhavana Kumar of Kumar La Noce builds a grid that provides a light organisational structure, offering rhythm without strict containment.
Within it, gardener Kush Sethi’s ongoing cultivation supports growth that is responsive and seasonal. The work unfolds gradually, with care as a central material, and will remain open until February 2027. As both installation and reflection, the garden can be read as a quiet response to archival traditions grounded in ownership and control. Instead, it leans toward continuity, interdependence, and lived presence. Here, plants are encountered not as scientific curiosities, but as living beings, rooted in soil, shaped by climate, and sustained through everyday acts of tending.
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