In the years following 1914, while the rest of the world was at war, a Hyderabadi prince found art to be more valuable than his post as Prime Minister.
Indian art had, over the years, been appropriated into collections outside of India. Very few collections at the time matched the scope and breadth of what lay in the British Museum’s collection of pilfered artifacts. Nawab Mir Yousuf Ali Khan’s fascination for the arts changed this, in the process creating the largest one-man collection of art in the world.
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The young collector of toys
As a small boy, Yousuf Ali Khan added ever more exotic toys to his collection. It was not difficult to do when you are the expected successor in a family that had produced five prime ministers for the Nizam. Interestingly, Yousuf’s childhood toys are anthropological – signifying an early interest in people and their expressions of culture.
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