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ISAS is proud to announce the 8th Sarah Kailath Memorial Lecture - a lecture series on the theme of Women and Leadership. This lecture series has been established in memory of Sarah Kailath (February 5, 1941 - October 15, 2008), a long-time supporter of ISAS’s mission and activities and in whose name the Institute holds an endowed chair titled the Sarah Kailath Chair in India Studies.

Our eighth Sarah Kailath Memorial lecturer will be Debra Diamond, Elizabeth Moynihan Curator for South and Southeast Asian Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Dr. Diamond’s talk is based on her recent co-curated exhibition A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur (2023), which reveals the environmental, political, and emotional contexts in which a new genre of painting emerged in Udaipur, a court in northwest India, in the 1700s.

Event moderated by Sugata Ray, Associate Professor, South and Southeast Asian Art, History of Art Department at UC Berkeley.  

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This event will be live streamed on SAAI’s FB page - SAAIatUCBerkeley.

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ABSTRACT:

Udaipur’s water harvesting infrastructure is a central feature in the monumental paintings made by Udaipur court artists between 1700 and 1900. Long regarded as “fantasy landscapes,” Diamond reveals the cartographic and narrative strategies that artists deployed to represent the local. Made to engender emotions, cement interpersonal bonds, and strengthen feelings of attachment to place, the paintings today shed light on historical manipulations and cultural perceptions of water and terrain.

SPEAKER BIO:

Dr. Debra Diamond is Elizabeth Moynihan Curator for South and Southeast Asian Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. A renowned specialist in Indian court painting, Dr. Diamond received two Awards of Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators for her exhibition, Yoga: The Art of Transformation (2013). In 2008, she was the curator for the acclaimed international exhibition Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur; the exhibition catalog won the College Art Association of America’s 2010 Alfred H. Barr, Jr. award for best museum scholarship.

Her other exhibitions have included Worlds within Worlds: Imperial Paintings from India and Iran (2012); In the Realm of the Buddha (2010); Facing East: Portraits from Asia (2006); Perspectives: Simryn Gill (2006); Autofocus: Raghubir Singh’s Way into India (2003); and the re-installation of Arts of the Indian Subcontinent and the Himalayas at the Freer. She received her PhD from Columbia University (2000).

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The Sarah Kailath Memorial Lecture on “Women and Leadership,” derives from the Sarah Kailath Chair in India Studies. The chair was established by Thomas Kailath, and Vinita and Narendra Gupta in honor of Dr. Kailath’s wife, Sarah Kailath, to enhance awareness and knowledge of issues relating to the Indian subcontinent. The current Sarah Kailath Chair is Munis D. Faruqui, Chair, Institute for South Asia Studies and Associate Professor, South Asian Studies. Professors Lawrence Cohen, Raka Ray, Robert P. Goldman and Thomas Metcalf previously held the Chair..

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The South Asia Art Initiative at the University of California, Berkeley promotes research-based conversations and collaborations around the arts of South Asia + its diasporas from the ancient period to the now. To read more about the Initiative and help support its various fundraising goals, please click HERE.
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Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies

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For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.

PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.

Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.