Museum Picks First Curator for India Art

The San Diego Museum of Art on Thursday appointed Ellen Smart its first curator of Indian paintings.

Smart, 45, will be in charge of about 1,400 Indian paintings and manuscript illuminations bequeathed to the museum in 1986 by Edwin Binney III, a former museum trustee.

The Binney Collection, valued at $40 million to $50 million, spans more than seven centuries of Indian art from Rajasthan to Agra, from a rare, 12th-Century manuscript on palm leaves to 20th-Century paintings.

“It will take me a couple of years just to see what’s here,” said Smart, who begins at the museum in May. She will continue doing independent art research in Rhode Island until then.

Smart first became acquainted with works in the Binney Collection when she saw them in a show in San Francisco in the late 1960s. At the time, she was studying for her master’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

“I’ve been working with Indian paintings ever since,” she said. “Somehow it’s very fitting to come back to them.”

The works--described by museum director Steven Brezzo as “a breathtaking addition to the (museum) collection”--were held in probate until just last month, when complex negotiations between the museum, Binney’s estate and the Massachusetts attorney general’s office finally concluded.

An exhibition of highlights from the collection is scheduled at the museum for next December. More comprehensive shows and publications will follow.

Smart, a specialist in 16th- and 17th-Century Mughal painting, received her Ph.D. in the art and archeology of South Asia from the University of London. She has worked as a research curator and a consultant for such institutions as the Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art in Kansas City, Mo., and the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. In 1988, she was named a Fulbright Scholar.

Smart’s publications range from children’s books to articles in scholarly journals. According to Brezzo, it was important to find a curator “committed to public education” because Indian art has had so little exposure in San Diego.