September 15, 1999

Treasures of the Talpurs: Collections from the Courts of Sindh

Treasures of the Talpurs: Collections from the Courts of Sindh, heralded the inauguration of Mohatta Palace Museum to the public. It was also the first exhibition of its kind to have drawn on private collections and make them accessible to a public audience. The exhibition was a trail blazer as it set standards of display and documentation never before seen...

December 10, 1999

Qalam: The Art of Calligraphy

Qalam illustrated the decorated alphabet on a range of materials: stone, wooden architectural elements, metal ceramics, miniature painting, sculpture, textiles, and paper. The exhibition focussed on historical Quranic manuscripts rendered in kufic, naqshi, thuluth and nastaliq scripts that spanned ten centuries, most especially a corpus of work by Yaqut ul  Mustasim (d. 1258 CE), court calligrapher to the last Abbasid...

April 04, 2000

Visions of Divinity: The Art of Gandhara

Gandhara is the second of the great ancient civilisations to which Pakistan is heir, the other being the Indus valley civilisation. Gandhara was almost exclusively located in Pakistan with occasional offshoots into Afghanistan, such as  Hadda. 

November 01, 2000

Miniature Painting: A Revival

This exhibition featured works by thirty  modern Pakistani artists, sharing  traditional themes of popular myth, court life and contemporary socio-political issues.

December 01, 2001

Threads in Time: Costume and Textiles of Pakistan

An amalgam of the rich textile arts of Pakistan featured over two hundred items of dress. This was a compelling collection of styles from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. There were stunning exhibits generously loaned by museums, private collectors and master craftsmen of traditional folk and urban garments, accessories ranging from purses, hats, shoes, shawls, dowry bags, turbans, sashes...

February 01, 2002

Sadequain: The Holy Sinner

One of Pakistan’s most important and enigmatic artists, Sadequain was widely thought of as a polymath. His large scale public works with graphic imagery have become a part of Pakistan’s cultural landscape, particularly at the Frere Hall in Karachi and the ceiling of the Lahore Museum. Sadequain was considered a national treasure and his death in 1987 evoked considerable media...

February 01, 2003

Manasarowar to Manora: Images (1830- 1940)

The river Indus, also called Sindhu, has been the lifeblood of South Asia. Unlike nations which have arbitrary boundaries, rivers flow across cultures and have historically allowed for the rise of different civilisations and cultures along their length, one of these being the Indus valley civilisation.

December 11, 2003

Jamil Naqsh: A Restrospective

The Jamil Naqsh exhibition at the Mohatta Palace Museum, was the second major retrospective on a Pakistani visual artist after Sadequain. 

December 01, 2004

Jewel in the Crown: Karachi under the Raj 1843 – 1947

One of the most ambitious exhibitions at the Mohatta Palace Museum, Jewel in the Crown was rooted in the city of Karachi. The curators assembled a staggering array of objects that were displayed in all the galleries of the building and extended into the gardens, transforming the architectural exterior of the building in addition to its interior spaces. 

June 23, 2006

Tale of the Tile: The Ceramic Traditions of Pakistan

The longest running exhibition to date at the Mohatta Palace Museum brought to life Pakistan’s ceramic traditions. The displays, spread over seven galleries on the ground floor traced, chronologically and geographically, the making and traditions of tiles through history right up to the work of contemporary ceramicists.

December 09, 2009

Images: There and Then A Photographic Exhibition

An exhibition hosted by the Mohatta Palace Museum that featured the work of sixteen photographers including Aasim Akhtar, Umair Ghani, Arshad Ghori, Malcolm Hutcheson, Amean J., Tapu Javeri, Syed Javaid Kazi, Shamyl Khuhro, Akbar Khushik, Farah Mahbub, Arif Mahmood, Kohi Marri, Mohammad Ali Qadri, Izdeyar Setna, Daanish Tapal and Ayesha Vellani.

January 04, 2010

The Benazir Bhutto Gallery

An exhibition of rare photographs and memorabilia of Benazir Bhutto and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Objects were borrowed from the Institute of Sindhology and placed on display on the first floor of the Museum for a week only.

March 23, 2010

Birth of Pakistan: A Journey through Pakistan’s early years

The Birth of Pakistan installed by The Citizens' Archive of Pakistan was an interactive exhibition designed for children. Through interactive installations, audio visual games and assorted images, the exhibition commanded the attention of young viewers. It began with the Lahore Resolution of 1940 and moved on to the creation of Pakistan in 1947.  There was a recreation of a train...

November 01, 2010

The Rising Tide: New Directions in Art from Pakistan

Mohatta Palace Museum entered a new era of  exhibitions in 2009. While exhibitions on Sadequain and Jamil Naqsh had demonstrated the important modernist tradition of artists, The Rising Tide curated by the artist, Naiza Khan, opened a new chapter in exhibition display, as the first of its kind to bring the work of over 40 contemporary artists to a wider...

January 10, 2012

Sand and Silk: Textiles from Africa

Despite historical, trade and migratory links between South Asia and Africa, the land mass of Africa remains an intriguing continent. It's deep rooted sense of self, vividly expressed in its textile arts, encompasses widely differing materials, techniques and usage that continue to hold us in thrall till the present day.

February 01, 2013

Labyrinth of Reflections: The Art of Rashid Rana 1990-2010

Labyrinth of Reflections, was a retrospective of Rashid Rana’s career from 1992 to 2012, beginning with An Idea of Abstract I which displayed his early grid paintings made between 1992-1993, in Boston and later, in Pakistan. These works sought to subvert and contradict the aesthetics of abstraction or minimalism. His works ultimately addressed socio-political concerns and were conceptual in nature....

May 16, 2014

Drawing the Line: Rare Maps and Prints

Drawing the Line took as its point of departure, the notion that a history of the world can be plotted cartographically to relate untold stories and shed new light on our heritage. A corpus of historical maps showcased territories that make up a wide span of countries from Afghanistan to Burma and China to Pakistan. The displays demonstrated ways in...

June 10, 2015

A Flower From Every Meadow: Design and Innovation in Pakistan’s Dress Traditions

A Flower from Every Meadow built upon previous exhibitions of textiles and dress at the Mohatta Palace Museum, as well as internationally with institutions, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The exhibition investigated the nature of dress concluding with contemporary innovation within Pakistan.

August 01, 2016

Wildly Ours: Past, Present and Future of Pakistan’s Wildlife

February 15, 2017

Paradise on Earth: Manuscripts, Miniatures and Mendicants from Kashmir

Kashmir is the geographical summit of South Asia and sits at the cross roads of civilisations and of the countries of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, China and Pakistan. This has made it a site of conquest and cultural exchange as an important destination on the Silk Road that allowed pilgrims, artists, poets and diplomats to travel along it.

October 02, 2017

Imran Mir: Alchemist of Line

Imran Mir was a Karachi based artist whose work brought together aesthetically diverse yet complimentary practices of painting, sculpture, architecture and design into a single oeuvre. This important artist existed on the cusp of modern and contemporary styles.

May 08, 2018

Makli: Symphonies in Stone

Symphonies in Stone focused on one of the six World Heritage sites in Pakistan, Makli in Thatta, just a couple of hours drive from Karachi.

December 10, 2019

Staying On: The Art of Hal Bevan Petman

Henry Charles Bevan Petman was born in 1894 in Gloucestershire, England, to parents who had a history of service in India. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, one of the foremost art schools in the United Kingdom. The Slade had a classical approach to training in art, focusing on the human form and realism, which may explain...

November 24, 2020

Gaj: Colours of the Rainbow

Gaj: Colours of the Rainbow focuses on embroidery on a woman’s blouse front. The embroidery on Gaj is important not only as adornment but also in establishing individual and group identity. The exhibition, displaying over sixty pieces from across Sindh, Balochistan, Gilgit Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, draw on several private collections, with some objects dating back over one hundred years...

June 29, 2021

Rebel Angel: Asim Butt

March 31, 2022

Images of Science

The exhibit Images of Science consists of dramatic and colourful images of the cosmos and the earth's surface using advanced imaging techniques, specialized telescopes and super computers to convey signals from individual receptors.

January 17, 2023

The First Governor - General of Pakistan 1947 - 1948

The First  Governor - General of Pakistan 1947 - 1948 is a compendium of rare and not so rare photographs, positively attributed to Mr. Jinnah's official photographer, Ziauddin Barni, from the collection of his granddaughter Zareen Baqir.