Indian Textiles from the Parpia Collection Exhibited at the MFAH

Detail of a semi transparent Kantha, 19th C, undivided Bengal, under backlighting. Gift of Banoo and Jeevak Parpia to the MFAH.

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The- talk will revisit two major exhibitions that framed the Parpia Collection’s debut at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The first, Woven Wonders (2023), co-curated by Rosemary Crill and Amy Poster, drew more than 55,000 visitors. Following the museum’s acquisition of the Parpia’s Trade Textile Collection in 2024, a second comprehensive exhibition, From India to the World, opened in 2025 and closed this September. After a brief overview of both shows, the talk will highlight a selection of textiles featured in each.

Jeevak Parpia is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at Cornell University, and Banoo Parpia retired in 2020 from her position as Director of Asian and Middle East Alumni Affairs and Development at Cornell. Their shared passion for Indian textiles began in the late 1980s and has since led to an exceptional collection that has been featured in numerous exhibitions. Works from their collection have been shown at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University and at Mount Holyoke College. A major exhibition, Traded Treasures: Indian Textiles for Global Markets, was held at the Johnson Museum in 2019 and accompanied by a catalog of the same name. Two painted textiles (Pichwais) from their collection were included in an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, while trade textiles from the collection were later shown at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (2020) and the Saint Louis Art Museum (2022).