A Virtual Tour of the Exhibition "On the Sweetness of the World: Contemporary Art from India"

The exhibition “On the Sweetness of the World: Contemporary Art from India,” presented in the White Hall of the General Staff Building of the State Hermitage Museum, is now accessible via a virtual visit on the museum’s website.

This new digital project enables audiences to engage with the exhibition of contemporary Indian art from anywhere in the world.

“The exhibition is emphatically in the character of the Hermitage. We have selected artists who are of interest to our tradition of presenting the new within the context of existing collections, displays and traditions. Mughal miniatures, wall paintings from Silk Road monasteries and Iranian bronzes have all been brought into the dialogue,” Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, commented.

The virtual visit comprises eleven spherical panoramas that follow, in sequence, the visitor’s route through the exhibition’s sections, drawing attention to its principal themes. Detailed information on the exhibits is available via pop-up cards; the exhibition showcases works from the museum’s permanent holdings alongside various temporary loans.

A distinct solution was devised for the room housing Afrah Shafiq’s video-game «Nobody knows for certain» installation — the first time a work of this kind has been presented within the museum’s halls — whereby a trailer of the piece is made available within the virtual visit itself. Video works by other artists are treated differently within the virtual tour: as these pieces remain subject to copyright and are shown only during the exhibition’s opening hours, they cannot be viewed online. They are instead included in the virtual visit in the form of illustrations — a static image accompanied by a card listing the work’s attributes. In this way, the virtual visit becomes not merely a digital counterpart to a walk through the galleries, but an interactive museum catalogue of the exhibition, addressed to a broad public.

The virtual visit has been published in both Russian and English and is available via the link. The Russian-language version is accompanied by an audio commentary from Marina Schulz, Head of the Department of Contemporary Art at the State Hermitage Museum and curator of the exhibition.

The exhibition “On the Sweetness of the World: Contemporary Art from India” may be visited until 4 October 2026, with an admission ticket to the General Staff Building of the Hermitage. The virtual visit is available on the museum’s website, under the “VIRTUAL VISIT” section.

The exhibition is organized by the State Hermitage Museum in partnership with Threshold Art Gallery

Curated by Marina Sсhulz

Curatorial Consultant: Tunty Chauhan

Exhibition design: MISH studio, Mikhail Maslov, Elena Evstratova

For their contribution to the project, the organizers extend their heartfelt gratitude to Ekaterina and Andrey Terebenin