Kaja McGowan and Ellen Avril curate “The Hum of Life: A Thousand and One Tales from Bali” at the Johnson Museum.”
The exhibition runs from Jan 24–May 24, 2026, at the Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art. It is curated by Kaja McGowan, Associate Professor of History of Art, and Ellen Avril, Interim Director and the Judith H. Stoikov Curator of Asian Art at the Johnson Museum.
Long celebrated as an exotic locale, Bali is a tiny, predominantly Hindu island that teems with activity in the Indonesian archipelago. But its perpetual “hum of life” is not as orderly or harmonious as tourist literature would have us believe.
Balinese paintings, textiles, shadow puppets, masks, and sculptures reveal a multitude of narratives, from imaginative tales to the heroics and moral lessons of the Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, to the gendered relationships, humor, and magic of local Indonesian stories. They also detail aspects of daily life in Bali in which storytelling, performance, and religious practice intertwine.
Nearly three decades of collecting Balinese art at the Johnson Museum are celebrated in this exhibition. That collection has been made possible by Cornell’s Modern Indonesia Project, founded in the 1950s, and generous donations to the Museum from scholars of Southeast Asian studies, their families, and their students.
Twenty years ago, the Museum acquired a significant collection from anthropologist Joseph Fischer. Claire Holt (1901–1970), who taught at Cornell in the 1960s and wrote the groundbreaking Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change, was described by her Cornell colleague George Kahin as a quintessential teller-of-tales. He was inspired from his ongoing conversations with Holt to collect Balinese paintings, including on his 1967 honeymoon in Bali with his wife, Audrey Kahin, MA 1976, PhD 1979, who recently donated them to the Johnson Museum.
Holt also gave artworks to friends and students, most notably the distinguished Cornell professor Benedict R. O’G. Anderson, who donated many of those gifts along with dance masks he acquired during his own fieldwork in Indonesia.
https://museum.cornell.edu/exhibition/the-hum-of-life-a-thousand-and-one-tales-from-bali/
Image: Rectangular hanging (tabing) depicting Sita’s ordeal by fire, from the Ramayana. Cotton embroidery on cotton cloth. Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art. Acquired through the George and Mary Rockwell Fund. Object Number 2007.031.069.
