Lessons from Udaipur | Painted and printed maps on exhibit at the City Palace Museum
The HinduSix months ago, when curator Shailka Mishra and art conservators Anuja Mukherjee and Bhasha Shah began browsing the maps at the Maharana of Mewar Charitable Foundation’s research centre in Udaipur, they found them in a sorry state — stored with the limited knowledge and materials available at the time. “Some were so brittle they couldn’t be opened properly as there was termite damage,” says Mukherjee, while Shah adds, “Other maps were so fragile that they would dissolve into fragments if touched.” Months of restoration followed: using Japanese archival paper, special adhesives, fumigation to remove dust, and humidifying to ensure the ink did not fade. The long hours of work have culminated in an exhibition at the City Palace Museum in Udaipur, Picturing Place: Painted and Printed Maps at the Udaipur Court. It brings together 53 rarely seen artefacts: a mix of hand-painted maps, photographs of 18th century landscape paintings, topographical maps, world maps, and cartographic devices and documents from the Mewar Royal collection.
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Real olde world directions
New Indian Express
An exhibition that reveals the stories hidden within the old maps of Udaipur
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