CLEVELAND, OH.- Potent themes of righteousness, vengeance, and loyalty are explored through dramatic episodes in which demons are vanquished, lovers are separated, and monkeys, bears, and a man-eagle save the day in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s newest exhibition, Epic of the Northwest Himalayas: Pahari Paintings from the “‘Shangri’ Ramayana.” On view from Sunday, April 19, through Sunday, August 16, 2026, in the Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery, Epic of the Northwest Himalayas reunites paintings from a widely dispersed pictorial series that presents the story of the Hindu divine hero Rama. The exhibition is free and open to all.

The story of Rama is a timeless tale more than 2,000 years old, which remains a cultural force across southern Asia. Along with the 40 paintings, three digital stations positioned throughout the exhibition feature more than 100 gently animated images of paintings from multiple collections reassembled into their original episodic sequences.

Created with blazing colors for a royal collection around 1700, the “Shangri” Ramayana has been a beloved and enigmatic series among scholars and collectors for the past century. New evidence from previously unpublished paintings reveals a wider range of artistic styles and shows that the total number of folios is three times greater than previously recognized. It argues in favor of a collaborative model of production involving artists from across the alpine region of Pahari India, which straddles the present-day state of Himachal Pradesh and that of Jammu and Kashmir.

The unbound pictorial series began to be divided as early as the 1760s, suggesting that its spiritual merit was intended to be shared among multiple owners. Its title derives from the kingdom of Shangri, where a member of the royal family sold his 275 folios to a dealer in Delhi, beginning in 1962. Hundreds more paintings, however, have been in other royal collections.

“Epic of the Northwest Himalayas presents not only the narrative arc of this influential and timeless story but also exciting new research on distinctive patronage and painting systems in the valley kingdoms of Pahari India,” said Sonya Rhie Mace, George P. Bickford Curator of Indian and Southeast Asian Art.

Focusing on a single series, the exhibition introduces visitors to the experience of viewing paintings that were made together but became separated over time. Using digital image animation to showcase select passages of sequential folios that cannot be physically displayed together, the three videos create an astonishing minute-by-minute unfolding of scenes that culminate in previously unrecognized climaxes becoming apparent. Both cinematic and operatic when viewed together, the paintings also stand brilliantly alone as individual works of art.

Epic of the Northwest Himalayas and the related installation, Pahari Paintings: Art and Stories in the CMA’s gallery 242B, are part of a larger project connecting the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM), and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC (NMAA). All three museums have recently acquired Pahari paintings from the Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim Collection. Alongside India-based scholars, curators from these three museums have worked collaboratively to study, publish, and display Pahari paintings from the Benkaim Collection. Their efforts have come to fruition in the publication Pahari Paintings: Art and Stories and in exhibitions being presented at the CMA, CAM, and NMAA during the spring and summer of 2026.

The exhibition celebrates the publication of the Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim Collection of Pahari paintings, which includes three pages of the “Shangri” Ramayana that are on view and contextualized in Epic of the Northwest Himalayas.