Indian summer at British Museum

It will be the first time Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur has been seen in Europe

The British Museum has revealed ambitious plans for a six-month season showcasing Indian art and culture.

Indian Summer will open in May next year, bringing together art, lectures performance and film.

An Indian garden - complete with banyan trees and a lotus flower pool - will be constructed in the museum's forecourt.

Museum director Neil MacGregor said: "There is an enduring fascination with the rich diversity of the art and culture of India."

The highlight of the season is the exhibition Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur, which will be seen in Europe for the first time.

Indian landscape

It will feature a loan of 55 works from the Mehrangarh Museum Trust in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, and focus on the distinctive style of court painting which flourished in the region during the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries.

Mr MacGregor added: "Garden and Cosmos epitomises this diversity through the polarities expressed in the paintings, focusing on both the external courtly life of pleasure on the one hand and an internal life of devotion and speculation on the other."

The museum is also creating an Indian-themed landscape on the museum's west lawn in collaboration with Kew Gardens.

India Landscape, running from 2 May to 28 September, will take visitors on a journey from the mountainous environment of the Himalayas, through a temperate region and ending in a sub-tropical zone centred on a pool filled with lotus flowers.