HOUSEHOLD GODS: HINDU DEVOTIONAL PRINTS, 1860–1930

 December 16, 2025

(New York, December 16, 2025)—On January 24, 2026, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the exhibition Household Gods: Hindu Devotional Prints, 1860–1930, on view in four rotations through June 27, 2027. The exhibition presents over 100 works drawn from The Met collection, focusing on acquisitions from the past decade, presented in dialogue with select works of earlier painting traditions.

The exhibition is made possible by the Florence and Herbert Irving Fund for Asian Art Exhibitions.

Celebrating the gods through imagery is central to all religions, and nowhere more so than in Hinduism, where the communion between deity and devotee takes on a heightened immediacy and reality through the concept of darshan, “seeing God.” The necessity of displaying an image of the divine in the home, located in the household shrine, was traditionally fulfilled by icons made of clay or metal. The invention of photography in the mid-19th century and its rapid introduction in India fatally disrupted traditional painting and the production of painted religious images that were used by Indian elites.

 Soon after, however, with the arrival of new lithographic printing technologies from Europe in the 1880s, another revolution occurred in the world of religious painting: the mass production of inexpensive chromo-lithographic prints (oleographs) of the Hindu gods for widespread consumption. For the first time in India, even the humblest home could afford a colorful icon of their chosen god to display in the household shrine.

This exhibition introduces the little-known last chapter of traditional Indian painting and its role in the popular worship of the Hindu gods. It spans from the early hand-colored woodblock prints produced in the Battala district of Calcutta in the first half of the 19th century—such as The Met’s relief print celebrating the goddess Durga (2020.14)—to the astonishing images of Kali as worshipped at the Kalighat temple in south Calcutta, as seen in The Met’s Sri Sri Kali (2021.325.6a, b). Among the most revolutionary prints produced on the new lithographic presses was the set of 10 Mahavidyas, tantric aspects of the goddess, produced by the Calcutta Art Studio Press around 1885–95.

 The goddesses were paired, two per sheet, and inscribed in both Bengali and English (2021.214). The powerfully evocative portrait-like work depicting Shiva as Lord of the Universe in Benares, Kashi Vishvanatha (2016.499.2), underscores the quality of artists employed in much of the production. Among the highlights of the later works was the chromatically rich imagery produced by the Ravi Varma Press, epitomized by the radiant six-head Subramanian, Shri Shanmukha Subramania (2021.222).

https://www.metmuseum.org/ko/press-releases/household-gods