ACSAA is introducing a new series of book talks. Books recently published and in-progress by ACSAA members are included. Conversation on books recently published are open to the public. Conversations on in-progress books are members-only. We also strongly encourage graduate students to participate with dissertation presentations in this series.
ARCHITECTURE
CONVERSATION WITH DR. DARIELLE MASON (PHILADEPHIA MUSEUM OF ART) & DR. DEBORAH STEIN (SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY) WITH A RESPONSE FROM DR. PADMA KAIMAL (COLGATE UNIVERSITY)
FRIDAY, MAY 12, 2023 | 3:00 to 4:00 pm ET
Click here for the Zoom link to the talk.
In the upcoming ACSAA book talk series, Dr. Darielle Mason (Philadephia Museum of Art) and Dr. Deborah Stein (San Francisco State University) will be in conversation with Dr. Padma Kaimal (Colgate University) about their books. Books included in the conversation are:
Darielle Mason, The Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, on Storied Stone: Reframing the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s South Indian Temple Hall by Darielle Mason, with contributions by Crispin Branfoot, Eleanor B. H. Coates and Susan Pepper Treadway, Anna Lise Seastrand, and Archana Venkatesan.
This book presents a behind-the-scenes history of the unique sixteenth-century Madurai temple hall installation reconfigured and reinterpreted in the Philadelphia Museum of Art since 1919. It also, perhaps most significantly, confronts from within the institution a number of issues surrounding the interpretation and ownership of India’s sacred art in the 21st century.
Deborah Stein, Lecturer Faculty in Art History, San Francisco State University, on The Hegemony of Heritage: Ritual and the Record in Stone.
This book offers four entirely different sets of data by reading the architectural, sculptural, and epigraphic record of the Ambika Temple in Jagat and the Temples of Eklingji in four distinct eras. The ensuing Art Histories compete methodologically only to reveal to the reader the politics of their own habits of looking. The friction between competing narratives about the Hindu Temple unravels intention and reception, theory and praxis, affect and the aftermath in new ways.
Organized by American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) and co-hosted by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
More book talks are on the way…check back in soon!
PAST BOOK TALKS
FACES OF GOD: IMAGES OF MUSLIM DEVOTION IN SOUTH ASIAN PAINTING
CONVERSATION WITH DR. MURAD KHAN MUMTAZ (WILLIAMS COLLEGE) & DR. YAEL RICE (AMHERST COLLEGE)
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2021 | 12:00 to 1:30 pm EDT
Click here for the Zoom link to the talk.
In the upcoming ACSAA book-in-progress talk, Dr. Yael Rice (Amherst College) will be in conversation with Dr. Murad Khan Mumtaz, Assistant Professor of Art, Williams College about his book-in-progress Faces of God: Images of Muslim Devotion in Indian Painting. The talk will be moderated by Professor Jinah Kim (Harvard University).
Organized by American Council for Southern Asian Art (ACSAA) and co-hosted by the Mittal Institute.
THE ART OF DISOBEDIENCE
BOOK TALK WITH DR. SUMATHI RAMASWAMY
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 01, 2021 | 12:00 to 1:30 pm EDT
Register Here for the talk! (Please contact ACSAA Webmaster at acsaawebmaster@gmail.com for link to recording; recorded video available to ACSAA members only.)
Hosted by Rebecca Brown, Professor, Department of the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University
Gandhi in the Gallery: The Art of Disobedience (Roli Books, 2021)
Sumathi Ramaswamy, James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of History, Duke University
Mohandas K. Gandhi has been described as ‘an artist of non-violence,’ crafting as he did a set of practices of the self and politics that earned him the mantle of Mahatma, ‘the great soul.’ His philosophy and praxis of satyagraha, non-violent civil disobedience, has been analyzed extensively. But is satyagraha also an aesthetic regime, with practices akin to a work of art? Is Gandhi, then, an artist of disobedience? Sumathi Ramaswamy explores these questions with the help of India’s modern and contemporary artists who have over the past century sought out the Mahatma as their muse and invested in him across a wide range of media from painting and sculpture to video installation and digital production. At a time when Gandhi is a hallowed but hollow presence, why have they lavished so much attention on him? A hundred and fifty years after his birth, Gandhi is hyper visible across the Indian landscape from tea stalls and government offices to museums and galleries. This is ironical given that the Mahatma appeared to have had little time for the visual arts or for artists for that matter. Yet fascinatingly, the visual artist has emerged as Gandhi’s conscience-keeper, reminding others of the meaning of the Mahatma in his own time and today. In so doing, these artists also reveal why this most disobedient of ‘modern’ icons has grabbed their attention, resulting in a veritable art of disobedience as an homage to one of the twentieth century’s great prophets of disobedience.
SCULPTURE
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 09, 2021 | 12:00 to 1:30 pm EDT
Hosted by Tamara Sears, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, Rutgers University
The Thief Who Stole My Heart: The Material Life of Sacred Bronzes from Chola India, 855-1080 (Princeton University Press, 2021)
Vidya Dehejia, Barbara Stoler Miller Professor of Indian and South Asian Art, Columbia University
The book treats Chola bronzes, not only as exquisite masterpieces created by talented wax modelers and accomplished metal casters, but as material objects that interacted in meaningful ways with the people and practices of their era. It raises questions not asked before and explores, for instance, the source of copper, the jewels used to adorn the bronzes, the obsession with Sri Lanka, and the role of women patrons. It also engages with the vast corpus of public records engraved on temple walls in an attempt to illuminate the ethos of the period.
TEXTILES
Saturday, February 27, 2021 | 12:00 to 1:30 pm EST
(This event was open to the public. ACSAA members can re-watch the recorded video of this talk. For access to the video, please contact ACSAA Webmaster.)
Hosted by Siddhartha Shah, Curator of South Asian Art and Director of Education and Civic Engagement at the Peabody Essex Museum
Making Kantha, Making Home: Women at Work in Colonial Bengal (University of Washington Press, 2020)
Pika Ghosh, Visiting Associate Professor, Haverford College
The Art of Cloth in Mughal India (Book-in-Progress)
Sylvia Houghteling, Assistant Professor, Department of History of Art, Bryn Mawr College
In this conversation, Pika Ghosh and Sylvia Houghteling will discuss their new work on kantha in colonial Bengal and cloth in Mughal India respectively with Siddhartha Shah.
Making Kantha, Making Home: Women at Work in Colonial Bengal, a book by Pika Ghosh explores the social worlds shaped by Bengali kantha surviving from the 19th and early 20th centuries through an examination of techniques, aesthetics,iconography and regional culture.
The Art of Cloth in Mughal India, a book-in-progress by Sylvia Houghteling examines both the aesthetics and wondrous techniques of cloth and cloth-making and the artful uses to which textiles were directed in the social, political, and religious life of early modern South Asia.
THE ARTS OF THE BOOK
Wednesday, April 28, 2021 | 1:00 to 2:30 pm EST
(This event was open to the public. ACSAA members can re-watch the recorded video of this talk. For access to the video, please contact ACSAA Webmaster.)
Hosted by Alka Patel, Associate Professor, Department of Art History, University of California, Irvine
The Ramayana of Hamida Banu Begum, Queen Mother of Mughal India (Silvana Editoriale, 2020)
John Seyller, Professor of Art History, University of Vermont
Marika Sardar, Curator, Aga Khan Museum
The Ramayana manuscript presented in this publication is a Persian-language adaptation of the Sanskrit epic, made and illustrated for Hamida Banu Begum, wife of Mughal emperor Humayun and mother of emperor Akbar. It was completed ca. 1594 with 56 paintings, and is preserved mostly intact in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha. The publication looks at Hamida’s life, her role in collecting and commissioning manuscripts, and production of the Doha manuscript itself, identifying, for the first time, the artists involved in creating it.