San Diego art lovers can hear with their eyes this season. At The San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park, Ragamala Paintings from the Binney Collection is on view through January 3, 2027, in the First Floor’s Gallery 12, the Barbara & Norton Walbridge Gallery — a joyful exhibition that turns music into color, story and emotion.
The idea began centuries ago in India. As illustrated books flourished from the twelfth century, artists took on a beautiful challenge: giving visual form to music by depicting the melodic modes known as ragas. Each raga carries an emotional essence, or rasa, linked to a season and a time of day, and to moments its sounds evoke, from offering prayer to picking flowers in a garden. By the sixteenth century, the ragas had become characters — heroes, heroines and gods — and their stories formed a new kind of musical illustration: the Ragamala, or “Garland of Ragas.”
Most Ragamala sets gather thirty-six paintings into six raga families, each led by a male raga accompanied by his wives, the ragini. Together, the paintings trace the arc of a day, from sunrise to lamplight, the turn of India’s six seasons, and the journey of lovers separated, longing and finally reunited. A featured highlight is The Musical Mode, Todi Ragini, made in Hyderabad in the Deccan around 1775–1800 in ink, opaque watercolor and gold on paper.
It is a small, radiant show that rewards slow looking — perfect for a Balboa Park afternoon at the Museum, at 1450 El Prado.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
