Thursday Lecture Series: India Unveiled: Sight, Sound, and Scent: Collecting and Presenting South Asian Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts

In recent years, the Detroit Institute of Arts has seen a renewed focus on art from the Indian subcontinent. In this lecture, DIA curator Katherine Kasdorf will discuss the museum’s multisensory presentation of South Asian art in the permanent- collection galleries; recent acquisitions; and an upcoming exhibition that will bring together a group of now-dispersed goddess sculptures from Tamil Nadu (southeastern India), exploring their many transformations over a 1000-year history.

Katherine Kasdorf is a Curator for Arts of Asia and the Islamic World at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She curated The Art of Dining: Food Culture in the Islamic World (2024–25, adapted from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and co-led the reinstallation of the DIA’s Asian art collection (2017–18). She holds a Ph.D. in South Asian art history from Columbia University and previously held a Wieler-Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.