Visitors to "Meeting God: Elements of Hindu Devotion," which opens tomorrow at the American Museum of Natural History, may or may not encounter the divine presence in its galleries. But they can easily enter into the show's mood of euphoric reverence and spiritual graciousness while also learning quite a bit about one of the world's great religions. And because nearly everything on display comes from India, which is 82 percent Hindu, visitors can also get a palpable sense of the completely fluid fusion of faith, visual creativity and daily life that saturates Indian culture. This is an amazing, often moving hodgepodge of a show. It occasionally, but only occasionally, feels like a walk-in National Geographic article, but generally, it works. Serene and carefully organized, it should appeal to believers and nonbelievers of all stripes. The phrase "Meeting God" is a reference to the Hindu word for enlightenment, darshan, which translates more precisely as "seeing or being seen by God" - and this evocation of reciprocity and visual experience echoes through the show.

It has been organized by Stephen P. Huyler, a freelance art historian, social anthropologist and photographer, and Laurel Kendall, the curator in the museum's anthropology division. Mr. Huyler has spent four months of each year since 1970 traveling around India, taking notes and photographs, buying crafts and interviewing hundreds of people, which makes this exhibition the culmination, so far, of a lifelong passion. "Meeting God" is tailored to its moment. It comes at a time when Asian Indians form one of the fastest growing immigrant groups in the New York metropolitan region, and Asian artists, with their traditional indifference to distinctions between high and low, and pop and kitsch, are a strong presence in contemporary art. It also weighs in on the current debate concerning the contextualization of art objects in museums, especially objects from other cultures. It is elegantly pro-context, and while better suited to a museum of natural history than to an art museum, it suggests that the argument doesn't really have two sides. In the end all exhibitions can be judged only on a case-by-case basis.

"Meeting God" brings together representations of the Hindu deities, which include tiny animated figures in copper alloy or marble, brightly stitched textiles and raucous little posters. Outstanding is a silver and wood figure of Gauri, the goddess of agricultural abundance, resplendent in a silver-embossed sari and heavy silver jewelry. There are incense burners and other ceremonial implements, engraved metal tantric plaques called yantra, cobra-headed lingas that are particularly powerful representations of the god Shiva. Several objects date from the 17th and 18th centuries, a few from the early 21st century, which is a startling phrase to see on labels. One recent addition, in carved and painted wood, depicts small spark-plug- like figures of Jagannath, a tree-god version of Vishnu; they might have stepped out of "South Park." The meanings and the uses of these objects are elucidated by wall texts that don't go on too long, documentary videotapes, bits of music and dozens of Mr. Huyler's photographs, which keep the Indian love of intense color lusciously present.

Appropriately, puja, the daily or twice daily worship ritual through which Hindus seek darshan, is supposed to involve all the senses. The show layers together different sensations and contrasting notions of value and permanence from the beginning. In the first gallery strains of a sitar and a bamboo flute greet the ear while a videotape shows sari-wearing women bathing in the Ganges River at sunrise, praying to the sun god Surya. One vitrine contains an early 20th- century statue of Ganesha - the elephant-headed son of Shiva - from the museum's collection, carved in marble and detailed in gold paint. Next to it is a carved sandstone sculpture of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, commissioned by Mr. Huyler especially for the exhibition from a stone cutter in the north central Indian city of Varanasi. Ritually prepared to be worshiped, she wears a gold-and-red sari and gold bangles; her palms and soles are dusted with bright vermilion spice, and she is wreathed in flowers, albeit artificial ones. Nearby a third vitrine holds a rustic terra cotta planter that also serves as a shrine to Lakshmi. Quickly and deftly made, it is one of hundreds turned out by craftsmen from the state of Orissa in east India. Its twin functions are inspired by the legend of Lakshmi's transformation into a bush of sacred basil, or tulasi, which is traditionally planted in it and could be the focus of daily worship. The exhibition's macrocosmic moment is a stupendous trompe-l'oeil re-creation of a sacred banyan tree, similar to those found in nearly every Indian village. Produced life size from photographs by the museum's diorama artists and accompanied by the sounds of chirping birds, it is festooned with offerings and surrounded by stone gods swathed in red cloth.

It rivals quite a bit of contemporary installation art. Scattered throughout are facsimiles of household shrines that contain backlighted photographs of real shrines (by Mr. Huyler), tiny figures, devotional implements and artificial flowers. Opening the carved-wood doors of these weirdly comforting Cornell-like simulacra is one of the better interactive experiences currently available in a museum. As the exhibition progresses, the same objects recur in different contexts. For example, 19th-century copper alloy niche lamps and holy water vessels are isolated in vitrines; nearly identical contemporary versions are integrated into the facsimile shrines, and others are shown being used during videotaped ceremonies. Along the way, "Meeting God" deflates fears about the so-called return of beauty to contemporary art. It reminds us that in most religious art beauty is a demonstration of faith and is profoundly spiritual, not frivolous. For Hindus, this demonstration can be intensely decorative and brightly colored and also breathtakingly ephemeral. In addition, the creation of this beauty is a ritual in itself. "Meeting God" may work so well because Hinduism is to a great extent a one-to-one experience, not unlike art. It is conducted mostly on a private basis, even in the middle of public temples or thronged processions, between a single worshiper and a single, personally selected god or goddess. The exhibition takes pains to dispel the notion that Hinduism encompasses thousands of deities and stresses that its adherents select a single god or goddess to worship for life when they reach adolescence.

This deity may be Vishnu, the preserver; Shiva, the god of creation and destruction; Shiva's wife, Parvati, the embodiment of the divine feminine, or their son, Ganesha, remover of obstacles and lord of beginnings. But each of the many options represents only a facet of a larger unknowable divine absolute called Brahman. Similarly, the form a puja takes is a personal choice. It may be the prayerful sunrise dip in the Ganges, or a symbolic dripping of water from a graceful ewer, as one of the photographs illustrates. It may be a ceremony conducted before a household shrine centering on the figure of a god or goddess that is prepared for worship each day, like Lakshmi, by being ritually bathed, dressed, bejeweled and anointed with spices. Yet many Indian women begin each day by creating an intricate geometric design of sprinkled rice powder just outside their front door, a homage to Surya that will quickly be destroyed. One of the show's best video moments shows several women covering a long, broad street with these designs just before a huge procession sweeps through. In another procession, recorded in photographs, scores of men carry a brightly painted 12-foot statue of Ganesha into the sea.

Made of solid unfired clay, it will dissolve soon after reaching its destination. "Meeting God" has a suitable coda in a small intimate display of photographs by Steve McCurry showing Hindus, Sikhs and Jains from across the metropolitan region beside their home or office shrines. Some of these arrangements are lavish by any standard and resemble enlarged versions of the facsimile shrines in the larger show. Others are modest and makeshift, tucked away in closets, cupboards, by office copying machines and, in one case, behind the counter of a video store. It is rare for an exhibition to bring so much information, spiritual feeling and visual beauty into alignment. There are greater - and certainly older - examples of Hindu art on the other side of Central Park at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But visit "Meeting God" first. It will expand the way you see them. Please check out the link provided by the museum too.

http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/meeting_god/index.html