The magnificent collection of bronze statues of Indian gods and goddesses belonging to New Orleans based cardiologist Dr. Siddharth Kirtilal Bhansali will be displayed at a special show in the New Orleans Museum of Art. The exhibition, entitled “The Elegant Image: Bronzes from Indian Sub Continent’ will run from August 4 to October 23, 2011.  Over 125 bronze statues of Jain, Buddhist and Hindu deities will be featured.

Dr. Bhansali’s collection is also the central theme of a new book “The Elegant Image: Bronze from the Indian subcontinent in the Siddharth K Bhansali Collection” by Pratapaditya Pal, an authority on the arts and culture of the Indian Sub-Continent, and Director of the Indian Art section of the Los Angeles County Museum. The art catalogue is to be released later this year. Dr. Bhansali is the son of Pushpaben and late Dr. Kirtilal Bhansali. He married Yashodhara Raje Scindia, who is currently a BJP MP, and they have three children – Akshay, 31, a news producer with MTV in New York, Abhishek, 25, an executive with a well known PR company and Trishala, 23, who graduated in Art from New York University.

Speaking to Janmabhoomi during a recent visit to Mumbai, Dr Bhansali reminisced about his childhood passion for collecting stamps and old coins while a student of Cathedral & John Connon School, and how after studying in St Xavier’s College and Sion Hospital he migrated to the US to pursue further studies and a career as a cardiologist.

How did he acquire his passion for sculptures? It all started when he bought a 4th Century bronze Jain sculpture at an auction in London to present to his mother, Pushpaben. Dr. Bhansali recalls the pleasure on her face as she told him how grateful she was that an ancient Jain artifact had been recovered by him and brought back not only to the country of its origin, but to the house of a devout Jain family. That comment sparked off a desire to collect many more such art objects and over the 35 year period since then, Dr Bhansali has acquired over 1000 such figurines. As many as 500 of these adorn his house at New Orleans, while others have been loaned or donated to museums for display.

Dr Bhansali also recounts how his house was one of the few that was left standing when a cyclone devastated the city of New Orleans in 2005. He himself was 85 miles away at Mississippi when the storm hit, and he feared the worst when he returned to the city. But to his delight, the bungalow remained almost unaffected despite the destruction and havoc that the cyclone had wreaked across most parts of the city.

In 1996, Dr Bhansali had organized a similar exhibition across museums in Los Angeles, New Orleans, London and Dallas (Port Worth). And now his future vision is to popularize Jain art even more widely all across the world for which he plans to organize “The Greatest Show of Jain Art’ across museums in Europe, America, Asia and Australia sometime in the near future.