I would welcome the opportunity to serve the American Council of Southern Asian Art in a board member position. I hope both my academic and museum backgrounds will allow me assist the board in addressing the diverse needs and interests of our scholarly community.
I received my Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles where I studied with Robert L. Brown and minored with Gregory Schopen. At present, I hold the position of Associate Curator in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where I have been employed since 2006. Prior to this appointment, I served for six years as Assistant Curator of South Asian Art at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. My academic studies and museum projects have encompassed a wide range of subjects. Although the early Buddhist art of India was the focus of my academic training, the nature of my early work at the Asian Art Museum led me to shift my dissertation subject to Indian painting. As such, I am a strong proponent of object-based training, which can lead to meaningful collaborations between museums and universities, academics and curators.
My curatorial projects have been varied, ranging from pan-Asian explorations to more-focused exhibitions, whether regional, historical, or contemporary. While at the Asian, I was involved in the reinstallation of the collection in its Civic Center location, and curated several permanent collection exhibitions including From Monastery to Marketplace: Books and Manuscripts of Asia (2003). It was as the point curator for several exhibitions that traveled to the Asian that I also worked with Ottoman art, South Asian and Persian drawings, and contemporary Pakistani miniatures.
Most of my curatorial projects have been concentrated at LACMA where, as a matter of course, I have organized a number of painting exhibitions drawn from the permanent collection. These include shows that consider the nature of collecting such as Princely Traditions and Colonial Pursuits in South Asia (2013-14). They also include exhibitions exploring different facets of Hindu devotionalism, such as Landscapes of Devotion: Visualizing Sacred Sites in India (2014-15) and Devi: The Image of the Goddess in Nepal (2015-16). In my installations, I have also tried to elucidate the relationships of Indian painting traditions to culture and literature more broadly, as in Monsoon: Indian Paintings of the Rainy Season (2016-17). My work at LACMA is not limited to India. I work regularly with the Himalayan collection and with the Southeast Asian collection as well. My most significant projects at LACMA have been the major loan exhibitions, India’s Fabled City: The Art of Courtly Lucknow (2011) and The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka (2018-19). Between these two, I curated the installation Pinaree Sanpitak: Hanging by a Thread (2013), highlighting the work of a contemporary Thai artist. I am currently working on a large pan-Asian traveling exhibition Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art across Asia, which will begin a US tour in Fall 2020.
I believe the scope of my work at LACMA parallels that of many ACSAA members— graduate students, curators, and faculty who regularly engage with or teach historical or contemporary non-European, pan-Asian, or South Asian art in a global context, while also pursuing highly specific research in the field of South and Southeast Asia. At LACMA, I now find myself engaged with numerous intersecting concerns as the museum embarks on the construction of a new building and the eventual reinstallation of its permanent collection in radically new configurations. As we all consider the future of our field and the trajectories of our research—in the museum or the academy—I hope to serve as a meaningful voice for the ACSAA community’s shared concerns.