Mithila Museum
Our Mission
To advance Mithila painting as a living art form of global significance—preserving its legacy, supporting its artists, and expanding its reach.
Our Purpose
What We Are
Here to Do
Our mission is to advance Mithila painting as a living art form of global significance by preserving its legacy, supporting its artists, expanding its scholarship, and presenting it to diverse audiences through exhibitions, education, research, and cultural dialogue.
We exist to ensure that Mithila painting is recognized not only for its origins, but for its continuing power: as a form of artistic expression, cultural memory, symbolic storytelling, and contemporary thought.
Core Commitments
Mithila Museum
Is Committed To
Centering Mithila Painting
as Painting
We place the visual and artistic force of Mithila at the core of our work. We seek to present the tradition with rigor, depth, and respect—as an art form with its own formal language, history, symbolism, and evolving contemporary practice.
Honoring Lineage and
Lived Knowledge
We recognize Mithila painting as a tradition shaped through generational transmission, especially through women's knowledge, domestic practice, and community memory. We are committed to preserving the histories, meanings, and voices that have sustained the tradition over time.
Supporting Artists and Future Practice
We believe the future of Mithila painting depends on living artists. Our mission includes creating opportunities for artist visibility, interpretation, collaboration, documentation, and long-term support so that the tradition continues to grow on its own terms.
Building Public Understanding
We aim to deepen knowledge of Mithila painting through exhibitions, writing, archives, lectures, school programs, and accessible interpretation that invites audiences into the richness of the form without simplifying it.
Connecting Heritage and Contemporary Life
We recognize that Mithila painting is not frozen in time. Contemporary artists continue to use it to express personal experience, social realities, and changing worlds. We are committed to presenting Mithila as a tradition that remains relevant, responsive, and alive.
Creating Dialogue Across AAPI Traditions
We seek to foster meaningful dialogue with painting traditions across Asian and AAPI communities—Korean minhwa, Vietnamese Đông Hồ, Chinese nianhua, Japanese devotional practices, and other community-rooted visual languages that continue to evolve.
A Place of Belonging
A Home for Research,
Reflection & Belonging
Mithila Museum aims to be more than a place of display. It aspires to be a home where artists, scholars, families, students, and diaspora communities can encounter Mithila painting as a source of learning, recognition, and shared cultural imagination.
Not merely preserved
But deeply understood.
Not only admired
But seriously studied.
Not only inherited
But continually renewed.
In this mission, we are guided by a long view: to help secure a future in which Mithila painting is not merely preserved, but deeply understood; not only admired, but seriously studied; not only inherited, but continually renewed.