Awards
2010 Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award
Debra Diamond, Catherine Glynn, and Karni Singh Jasol, Gardens and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur
Karni Singh Jasol, Catherine Glynn, and Debra Diamond
Gardens and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur (Washington, DC: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, 2008) documents an exhibition that dramatically debuted to wide audiences a body of nineteenth-century Jodhpur painting little known even to experts in the field. Debra Diamond and her fellow authors are to be commended for recognizing the compelling nature and historical importance of these works, and for successfully executing the arduous process of gaining access to the private collections in which they are held. This publication makes a major contribution to the study of the art of Southeast Asia through the production of breathtaking color plates and a text that impressively grounds the work in the context of Jodhpur history and the Nath religious sect, a scholarly feat that required demanding archival research conducted in a regional dialect of Hindi. With an extraordinary abundance of superb illustrations, the publication strikingly conveys the expansive scale, the miniaturist style, and the vibrant color of these unusual paintings, and it provides both highly accessible introductory essays and expansive scholarly apparatus. The product of extraordinary insight and endurance, the volume is at once beautiful and revelatory.
Jury: Teresa Carbone, Brooklyn Museum, chair; Anna Chave, Graduate Center, City University of New York; Virginia Fields, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; David W. Penney, Detroit Institute of Arts; and Susan Sidlauskas, Rutgers University.
