A pink Taj Mahal coming to New Haven’s Yale Center for British Art

The Taj Mahal is a monument to enduring love.

“Rina Banerjee: Take me, take me, take me . . . to the Palace of love,” which runs from this Saturday to July 26, draws on the iconic Taj Mahal in India, and then subverts “typical assumptions about the monument: its costly materials and elegant marble façades, its sense of history and permanence, and its fixed location,” according to a news release. 

By contrast, Banerjee’s palace consists of a frame of steel and copper wrapped in a skin of pink cellophane — “a mass-produced material designed for the disposable consumer culture of the 21st century,” according to the release. “The tent-like structure is suspended from the ceiling and floats above the ground,” according to the release. “In the center of the cavernous space are relics of colonialism including an antique Anglo-Indian Bombay chair juxtaposed with a chandelier assembled from a variety of expendable goods—pink foam balls, plastic beads, synthetic materials, and fake birds.”

To make it, Banerjee, who received her master’s in fine art from the Yale School of Art in 1995, combined found objects with consumer products she picked up from markets around her home in New York City.

This will be the first display of “Take me, take me, take me . . .to the Palace of love” at the center since it acquired the piece in 2023.

The Taj Mahal “is considered to be the greatest architectural achievement in the whole range of Indo-Islamic architecture,” according to UNESCO, which named it a World Heritage site in 1983. It was built by Shah Jahan, who ruler of the Mughal Empire in1628, for “his favorite wife,” according to National Geographic.

The Yale Center for British Art will host an afternoon at the “Palace of love,” Feb. 13, from noon to 5 p.m.  It will offer visitors a chance to look at the collection’s holdings related to love in a special display in the center’s study room; an opportunity to create pop-up cards and paper art (with supplies provided) from 1 to 4 p.m. and a curated tour of the exhibit at 1:30 and 3 p.m.