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The Smithsonian Presents Yoga: The Art of Transformation, world's first exhibition of yogic art.

Yoga is moving from the studio mat to the museum gallery.

The United States' Smithsonian Institution in Washington has organised what curators believe is the first exhibition about the visual history and art of yoga, its origins and evolution over time.

The Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery will showcase the exhibit, "Yoga: The Art of Transformation," through January. Later, it will travel to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and to the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Curators brought together Indian sculptures, manuscripts and paintings, as well as posters, illustrations, photographs and films to showcase yoga's history over 2,000 years.

Museum Director Julian Raby said years of research behind the exhibit shed new light on yoga's meanings and histories.

"It examines for the first time a spectacular, but until now largely ignored, archive," he said. "That archive is India's visual culture of extraordinary yoga-related artworks created, as you will see, over some two millennia."

Guest teachers will lead yoga classes in the museum's galleries on Wednesdays and Sundays. The museum also will host a symposium for scholars and enthusiasts on yoga's visual culture.

Curator Debra Diamond said the Smithsonian borrowed some of the greatest masterpieces in Indian art as well as pieces that have never been shown before.

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Museum exhibit explores yoga history