About Book
No one is a Hindu; no one a Muslim.
With these radical words Guru Nanak (1469-1539) founded the Sikh religion, calling for the recognition of one God, by whatever name devotees chose to call him, and the rejection of superstition, avarice, meaningless ritual, and social oppression. In his embrace of all religions, Guru Nanak envisioned a loving God that was outside the bounds of any one religion. He upheld the truth of equality among all beings and practiced the quiet heroics of holding up a mirror to foolishness. Meditation and devotion were identified as the work of the private domain and charity, honest work, and service to humanity as the obligation to the social domain.
The goal of this catalogue and the exhibition it documents is to bring together and illuminate works of art that identify these core Sikh beliefs in the period of their early development by the ten historical Gurus (16th-17th century). Through them, we are taken behind the external signs that identify Sikhs, who constitute the world's fifth largest organized religion, to its founding principles.
The works of art, from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, include paintings, drawings, textiles, and metalwork. They are drawn from museum collections in India and the United States and private collections in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The essay and object texts by B.N. Goswamy and Caron Smith provide keen insight into early Sikh devotion and examine the works of art in the context of the North Indian cultural mix in which they were created.
About Author
B. N. GOSWAMY studied history at the Punjab University in Chandigarh, India, and later specialized in the history of Indian art. For more than thirty years he was a professor of Art History at the Punjab University, where he was also Director of the University Museum of Fine Arts. He has been Visiting Professor at the Universities of Heidelberg, Pennsylvania, California (at Berkeley and Los Angeles), Texas, and Zurich and has lectured extensively in Europe, the United States, and India. Most of his publications have been in the area of Indian painting, imperial land grants, and the history of Indian costume. He is currently Professor Emeritus at the Punjab University.
CARON SMITH received a degree in philosophy from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, and Ph.D. in Chinese Art and Archaeology from the NYU Institute of Fine Arts. She has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in the Department of Asian Art and Office of the President, at the Asia Society, New York, as Associate Director of Galleries and Curator of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection: and at the San Diego Museum of Art, where she was Senior Curator of Asian Art. Currently she is Chief Curator and Deputy Director of the Rubin Museum of Art in New York.
Dr. Goswamy and Dr. Smith have successfully collaborated on exhibitions and a catalogue in the past, notably Domains of Wonder: Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting for the San Diego Museum of Art. Their combined academic and museum- based experience, their deep knowledge of the material at hand, and their understanding of what makes a compelling book and exhibition have all been brought to bear in I See No Stranger: Early Sikh Art and Devotion.