Museum and Market: A Curator Reflects on INDIA MODERN
Darielle Mason, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Thursday, November 6, 2008, 11:40am - 1pm, CHAT Lounge, 10th floor, Gladfelter Hall

About her talk, Darielle writes: "The relationship between museums and the art market is intellectually murky, mutually symbiotic, and ethically precarious. As a curator of South Asia in a “universal” museum, I have observed the changing perceptions of South Asian modern/contemporary art in both market and museum for two decades, culminating in the recent global “boom”. Yet 'observed' is key-- I am far more comfortable in the realm of anonymous, thousand-year old temple carvings than with the latest Mumbai installation sensation. However, during the past year, a series of interconnected events (acquiring the first work of Indian contemporary art for the collection, organizing a graduate class and exhibition around it, and bringing to Philadelphia “Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose, 1882-1966”) have thrown me into the melee and led me to reflect on how the museum/market relationship—and the art itself— might be placed into a broader historical perspective."

 

About the speaker: Darielle Mason is the Stella Kramrisch Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Adjunct Associate Professor in the History of Art Department at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her Ph.D. from Penn with a focus on the architectural sculpture of 10th century western Indian temples and has also handled the South and Southeast Asian, Islamic, and Himalayan collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She has organized exhibitions and published on topics ranging from South Asian temple sculpture (including Gods, Guardians and Lovers: Temple Sculpture from North India, A.D. 700-1200, The Asia Society Galleries and Mapin Publishing, 1993) to ‘miniature’ painting (including Intimate Worlds: Indian Painting from the Alvin O. Bellak Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), as well as aspects of Indian ‘folk’ art and the arts of the Himalayas. She is currently at work on an exhibition/ publication on Bengali embroidered quilts (kantha).