Goddesses - Indian Miniature Paintings and Sculptures

3 mai 2012 - 29 juillet 2012

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The vast Hindu pantheon is made up of beings often unfamiliar to the Western viewer. These highly expressive deities may seem fierce and bloodthirsty, with animal or human faces in blue, black, or golden hues, wearing clothes of animal skins and necklaces of snakes or human heads; but they can also be gentle, beautiful, richly adorned with jewels and wearing elegant saris. The goddesses, despite their disturbing outward appearance, are above all benevolent divinities fighting the forces of darkness, and ensuring a better world for humanity.
This exhibition at the Baur Foundation presents the lives of these goddesses through a selection of miniature paintings and sculptures borrowed from the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, the Ethnographical Museum in Geneva, as well as from a private collector.

In conjunction with this exhibition the museum presents

Chinese fans
The Patricia Gorokhoff Collection

26^th April – 29^th July
The Patricia Gorokhoff Collection of Chinese fans, donated to the Baur Foundation, Museum of Far Eastern Art, reveals the richness of 18^th and 19^th century fan production intended for the export market. Created in a wide variety of materials – lacquer, mother-of-pearl, ivory, silver, sandalwood – these works demonstrate the skill of the Chinese artisans in adapting a traditional art form to Western taste and fashion.