BROOKLYN, NEW YORK.- The Brooklyn Museum of Art presents "The Adventures of Hamza." The Adventures of Hamza will reunite nearly 70 of the finest surviving paintings from the Hamzanama, a fourteen volume manuscript created by Persian and Indian artists and commissioned by the Indian Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556 - 1605) when he was still a teenager. The paintings, fewer than 200 of which are believed to exist today, portra the legendary exploits and adventures of Amir Hamza, an uncle of the Prophet Muhammad. This epic tells of encounters with giants, demons, and dragons and of abductions and hair-raising chases. This exhibition will focus on the narrative and art historical aspects of this pivotal Indian manuscript and will examine the technical features that make these works unique in the history of Islamic art, new translations of the related text will be included.

 

The Adventures of Hamza has been organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Its organization was made possible by generous grants from Juliet and Lee Folger/The Folger Fund and the Starr Foundation, with additional funding from the Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries. This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities. Curator: Dr. John W. Seyller, Professor of Art History at the University of Vermont. Amy G. Poster, Curator and Chair, Department of Asian Art, will organize the project at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The BMA presentation is supported, in part, by the BMA’s Asian Art Council and the Hagop Kevorkian Fund.