Celebrate Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights, at the San Diego Museum of Art

Celebrate Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights. Now in its seventh year, Diwali is an annual, multi-institution Balboa Park event, held this year on October 18, from 3 – 6:30 p.m.
This year, The San Diego Museum of Art will offer docent-led tours of the South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Persian art galleries, a lantern making activity, and performances in the James S. Copley Auditorium.
The Museum’s holdings from China, Japan, and Korea include a range of paintings, ceramics, and metalwork. Highlights from the collection have been recently reinstalled in galleries conceived as a series of architectural experiences, moving through Chinese tomb art, icons from Buddhist shrines, Korean domestic arts, Daoist worksshown in a formal Chinese reception hall, and objects arranged in a Japanese living space. Throughout, hands-on elements offer visitors chances to interact with the art in a tactile way. The East Asian galleries were designed by the firm of Staples & Charles, and were partially funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Art from South and Southeast Asia makes up the largest part of the Museum’s Asian collections. This region includes the modern countries of India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka (called South Asia); as well as Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia, East Timor, and the Philippines (called Southeast Asia).
The world-renowned Edwin Binney 3rd Collection of Indian painting forms the core of this part of the Museum’s collections. Works of art from the Binney Collection are always on view in Gallery 10, with a new selection every six months. The Museum also holds religious sculpture of the Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu traditions, dating from the 2^nd to the 18^th century, on view in Gallery 9.
View Museum’s world-renowned Edwin Binney III Collection of Indian miniature painting, and visit Museum galleries, open late until 6:30 PM. The Museum’s Edwin Binney 3rd Collection is one of the finest and most comprehensive collections of South Asian paintings outside of India. It consists of 1,453 works that survey every major school from the 12^th century through the 19^th century. Intended to be encyclopedic, the collection includes paintings from made for the Mughal, Deccani, Rajasthani, and Pahari courts. The collection was assembled by Edwin Binney 3rd (1925–1986), an heir to the Crayola fortune who was also interested in Persian miniatures, Ottoman art, ballet prints, and theater books.  During Binney’s time and since being donated the Museum, works from this collection have traveled around the world. The Musée Guimet, Paris, the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, and the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, are among the institutions that have hosted exhibitions of Indian painting drawn entirely from The San Diego Museum of Art’s collection. Paintings from the collection have also been shown in many major exhibitions of Indian art, including:  Devi: The Great Goddess (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, DC; 1999); Vishnu: Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior (Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville and The Brooklyn Museum, New York; 2011); and Wonder of the Age: Master Painters of India, 1100-1900 (Museum Rietberg, Zurich and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 2011).
Sponsored by The Indian American Society, Indian Associations, and the Committee for Art of the Indian Subcontinent. The Committee for the Arts of the Indian Subcontinent (CAIS), established in 2003, supports The San Diego Museum of Art’s Edwin Binney 3rd Collection and works to enhance the appreciation of all the arts of India.