Smithsonian museum launching exhibition on the history of Yoga

Washington: In recognition of the global reach of yoga and its significance, the prestigious Smithsonian museum has announced the launch of world`s first visual exhibition on the history of yoga.

Christened ‘Yoga: The Art of Transformation’, slated to open on October 19 at the Arthur M Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian, will reveal its fascinating meanings and history over the past 2,000 years. Open till January 26, the exhibition will explore yoga`s philosophies and its goals of transforming body and consciousness, its importance within multiple religious and secular arenas, and the varied roles that yogis played in society, from sages to spies. To support the exhibition, the museum is launching the Smithsonian`s first major crowd funding campaign on May 29, a media release said. The exhibition features 90 stone and bronze sculptures, richly illustrated manuscripts and lavish court paintings created from the third to the early 19th century. Objects such as a 12-foot scroll of the chakra body and the earliest illustrated Yoga Vasishta (an important Hindu philosophical text) illuminate central tenets of yogic practice and philosophy. Other works shed light on yoga`s obscured history and archetypes, which ranges from tantric yogini goddesses to militant ascetics and romantic heroes. 19th and early 20th-century materials-including photographs, missionary postcards, posters, medical illustrations and early films charting the vilifications of yoga in the colonial period and the subsequent emergence of the modern discipline in India, will be on show. "These works of art allow us to trace, often for the first time, yoga`s meanings across the diverse social landscapes of India," said Debra Diamond, curator of South Asian art at the Arthur M Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art. "United for the first time, they not only invite aesthetic wonder, but also unlock the past-opening a portal onto yoga`s surprisingly down-to-earth aspects over 2,000 years," she said. The exhibition highlights include an installation that reunites for the first time three monumental stone yogini goddesses from a 10th-century Chola temple, 10 folios from the first illustrated compilation of asanas (yogic postures) made for a Mughal emperor in 1602 and never before exhibited in the US and a Thomas Edison film, Hindoo Fakir (1906), the first movie produced about India. PTI