Penn Calendar Penn A-Z School of Arts and Sciences University of Pennsylvania

India's Islamic Aesthetic Heritage

Navina Haidar
Curator of Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Friday, February 27, 2015 - 12:00
Center for the Advanced Study of India 3600 Market Street, Suite 560 (5th floor) University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104

About the Speaker:
Navina Haidar is a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. For almost a decade, she was deeply involved in the planning of the museum’s Islamic galleries, which opened in 2011. She is presently working on an exhibition on the art of India’s Deccan sultanates to be held at the Met in April 2015. Educated at the Universities of Delhi, London, and Oxford, Navina has written and lectured on Indian and Persian painting and Islamic art.

About the Lecture:
The very symbol of India, in many ways, is its most famous Muslim building, the Taj Mahal. From architecture to language, painting, music, textiles, food, and customs, India’s cultural life is deeply informed by its Islamic heritage, which, for the most part, has been celebrated as one of the many rich strands that make up Indian tradition. Is that point of view likely to change in the future? If so, how will India’s powerful Islamic heritage be framed in light of both national and global developments? If art is a mirror of society, then its relevance has never been more pertinent. Through a discussion and interpretation of key works of art of the Mughal and Deccan periods, and an overview of the management of Indian art in the 20th century, we may imagine a framework for India’s Islamic heritage in the twenty-first century.

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