Shahzia Sikander Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection, curated by the Pakistani-born artist Shahzia Sikander, is the ninth installation in the Nancy and Edwin Marks Gallery exhibition series devoted to showcasing Cooper-Hewitt’s permanent collection. Sikander is an internationally recognized artist whose work embraces the traditions of Indo-Persian miniature painting while integrating vivid images of contemporary life. Her paintings, which vary from intimate watercolors to murals, culminate in rich, precise compositions that invite closer scrutiny and exploration. For this exhibition, Sikander used a group of miniature paintings from the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery as a lens to select objects from Cooper-Hewitt’s own collection of wallcoverings, textiles, product design and decorative arts, and drawings, prints, and graphic design, plus books from the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Sikander’s Provenance, the Invisible Hand, made especially for the installation, is the resulting hybrid of these two collections, bringing together centuries of images and patterns that defy time and place.