The Metropolitan Museum of Art is presenting “Household Gods: Hindu Devotional Prints, 1860–1930,” an exhibition of more than 100 chromolithographic prints drawn from The Met’s collection, on view in four rotations beginning January through June 27, 2027. The show emphasizes acquisitions from the past decade and places them in dialogue with select earlier painting traditions.
This is billed as the first encyclopedic exhibition of chromolithographic prints from pioneering studio presses in Calcutta (Kolkata), Poona (Pune), and Bombay (Mumbai). Approximately 120 works—prints along with paintings and portable triptych shrines—offer a view of Indian devotional imagery on the cusp of modernity.
Curated by John Guy, Florence and Herbert Irving Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art, and made possible by the Florence and Herbert Irving Fund for Asian Art Exhibitions, the exhibition explores how mass-produced prints became a powerful means of expressing Indian religious identity during the early stirrings of the Independence movement.
The display traces the transition from household icons made of clay or metal to inexpensive chromolithographic prints that made colorful images of gods affordable for even modest homes. The museum notes that the mid-19th-century arrival of photography disrupted traditional painted religious imagery used by elites, and the later introduction of lithographic printing from Europe in the 1880s enabled mass production of devotional images for popular consumption.
Highlights span early hand-coloured Battala woodblock prints from Calcutta—such as a relief print celebrating Durga—to striking portrayals of Kali as worshipped at the Kalighat temple. Among revolutionary works are a set of 10 Mahavidyas produced by the Calcutta Art Studio Press circa 1885–95, printed two per sheet and inscribed in Bengali and English. The exhibition also underscores quality of artists employed in such production, including portrait-like depictions like Kashi Vishvanatha (Shiva as Lord of the Universe in Benares).
Later chromolithographs by presses such as the Ravi Varma Press are represented as well, exemplified by the radiant six-headed Subramanian (Shri Shanmukha Subramania). The Met describes the show as revealing a little-known final chapter of traditional Indian painting and its role in popular worship.
Coinciding with the exhibition, The Met will host a March 20 lecture, “Gods at the Gate of Modernity—Religious Arts in Colonial Calcutta,” by Bard College Research Professor of Religion Richard Davis, with opening remarks by India’s Consul General in New York Binaya Pradhan. The lecture and exhibition together examine how 19th-century Calcutta’s artists and artisans adapted mechanical reproduction to render Hindu gods more accessible, pioneering a devotional visual language that became pervasive in twentieth-century India.
