Museum of Fine Arts' latest traveling exhibition is When Gold Blossoms: Indian Jewelry from the Susan L. Beningson Collection, which spotlights more than 150 rings, anklets, earrings, hair pendants, jeweled crowns and other priceless jeweled objects dating from the 17th through 19th centuries. The featured pieces demonstrate Southern India's preference for gold, as well as showing what ornament means to Indian society — not only signaling social status, but bearing spiritual power and offering protection, growth and prosperity to its wearers.
In conjunction with When Gold Blossoms, MFA and Sunscreen Film Festival cohost "Bollywood Nights," a film event that spotlights three Bollywood films over three days. The screenings begin Friday with Bride and Prejudice, a 2004 musical adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice that updates the story with a cross-cultural romance. On Saturday, the featured selection is Mughal-E-Azam, an Indian epic that retells an episode from the life of the Mughal prince Salim, who falls in love with a slave much to the frustration of his kingly father. Finally, Hum Aapke Hain Koun…! — about an independent, fun-loving woman whose parents do not approve of her lover — closes the event on Sunday.
The museum leaves its Hazel Hough Wing open late so Bollywood attendees can peruse the glittering jewels of When Gold Blossoms. A wine and beer cash bar is also offered before the Friday and Saturday evening screenings, and an afternoon brunch is available for purchase to all Sunday attendees.
When Gold Blossoms: Indian Jewelry from the Susan L. Beningson Collection, through Dec. 28, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat., 1-5 p.m. Sun., $12 adults/$10 seniors/$6 students and children 7-18, and Bollywood Festival, 7 p.m. Fri.-Sat., 3 p.m. Sun., Oct. 10-12, $10, both at Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Drive N.E., St. Petersburg, , 727-896-2667, fine-arts.org.
This article appears in Oct 1-7, 2008.
