What's cooking in Bengal? These brass images are part of the new Art Museum exhibition Cooking for the Gods: The Art of Home Ritual in Bengal. It also features objects--such as decorated knives, stone molds for making sweets, brass vessels, and painted pottery--that show the intersection of the secular and the sacred in Bengali life.
Starting April 7, the Art Museum's main gallery will be transformed by the presence of a large, colorful shrine incorporating sculpture, vessels, and offerings to Krishna and other Indian deities. The shrine is the central focus of the exhibition Cooking for the Gods, which features more than seventy-five objects relating to the art of Hindu home ritual in the east Indian region of Bengal. The works are drawn from the extensive collections given by David R. Nalin to the Newark Museum, which organized the show.
Cooking for the Gods concentrates in particular on the role of women in the domestic sphere, where they tend to both their families and to the household deities. Sacred and secular come together in the exhibition, which provides a glimpse into the world of Bengali domestic life through a variety of beautiful and functional objects. Most were made in the twentieth century for village use and represent spiritual ideals that are as alive today as they were centuries ago.
Dennis Hudson, professor of world religions at Smith College and speaker at the exhibition's opening, noted, "The exhibition is a fascinating one because it illustrates ideas central to Indian religious tradition, both in Hinduism and Buddhism. Concepts of cooking and eating are absolutely fundamental notions underlying Indian civilization because food is, in itself, a metaphysical symbol of the material world we live in. Death, for example, is seen as a part of this continuum: when the physical body dies, it is cremated or consumed by the fire, thus 'feeding' the universe. Most ritual acts include food in some form, reminding the devotee of the continuing cycle of time and life, and that they not only eat but are eaten in turn by Time. "
"The show's special merit is its focus on distinctive aspects of Indian cultural production--visual and tactile experience, the blurring of boundaries between the mundane and the sacred, and women's roles in ritual," adds Indira Peterson, professor of Asian studies. "As a teacher of Indian religions, literature, and cultural history, I regularly introduce aesthetic and nontextual aspects of India's culture into my courses." She noted that "while it has become increasingly common for museums to exhibit everyday objects in cultural context, Mount Holyoke has been a trailblazer in this area." Peterson cited MHC's 1988 exhibition Faces of the Goddess: Folk Images of Female Divinity in India as an example.
Three talks, an opening reception and concert, and a dance performance (see CSJ calendars for details) will be presented in conjunction with the exhibition, which continues through June 28.
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