Dr. Marika Sardar

Associate Curator of
Southern Asian and Islamic Arts

Vision

When dealing with cultures and forms of art so different from what we encounter in our everyday American lives, I feel like a curator of any kind of Asian art has a duty to explain a lot to visitors. I want people to know what they are looking at, why it was made the way it was, and how it was originally displayed or used. But it is important to balance this desire to explain with providing the opportunity for visitors to simply look at and appreciate the objects for what they are—works of first-rate artistic quality and craftsmanship. It is these twin goals that I strive to achieve in my galleries.

I hope over the next months to make the five impressive galleries we have dedicated to Asian art a more cohesive space, with the chance to compare works of art across cultures, learn more in detail about what is on display, and see the deep strengths of our collection by putting study collections out on view. I also hope to bring a range of special exhibitions to the Museum.

About Dr. Marika Sardar

Marika Sardar has been Associate Curator of Southern Asian and Islamic Art at The San Diego Museum of Art since July 29, 2013. Marika received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU (2007) with a dissertation on Deccani architecture. She worked for six years in the Department of Islamic Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she was involved with the reinstallation of 15 galleries for Islamic art (2011) and the exhibition, The Interwoven Globe: Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 (2013).

Publications include essays on the architectural, textile, and painting traditions of the Deccan; on the Metropolitan Museum’s excavations at Nishapur, Iran; and on Safavid and Ottoman textiles. She has also written the section on South Asian art for the textbook Asian Art (2014), co-edited, with Navina Haidar, the volume Arts of India’s Deccan Courts, 1323-1687 (2011). They also co-wrote Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy, the exhibition catalog for the 2015 exhibition of the same name at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Marika wrote chapters on The Bahmanis and their Artistic Legacy, The Courtly Tradition of Kalamkaris and Burhanpur and Aurangabad.

Acquisitions:

Photograph by Lalla Essaydi, Harem #14C
4 lacquer objects from Iran
8 objects from Thailand and Myanmar, gifts of Melford and Audrey Spiro
8 prints by Japanese artist Yoshitoshi Mori, gifts of Lawrence and Sallye Krause

Exhibitions

Note: All dates are subject to change

Now through February 01, 2016: Pan Gongkai: New Paintings for The San Diego Museum of Art - Gallery 14

Theresa Lai, Donna Dominiak, Chief Financial Officer, Anita Feldman, Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs and Education, Ping-Hui Ku, Pan Gongkai, Mary Salerno, Director of Human Resources and Compliance
Photo by Bauman Photographers.

April 19 - September 4, 2016: Brush and Ink: Chinese Paintings from the San Diego Museum of Art, selected by Pan Gongkai

This exhibition will present our Chinese paintings collection as seen through the eyes of the contemporary artist Pan Gongkai. Reverential of ancient brush and ink traditions in his own work, Pan’s selection for the exhibition span the history of Chinese art from the Wu and Zhe schools through twentieth century artists such as Qi Baishi. The exhibition will also feature Noble Virtues, the long, scroll-format painting that Pan created for the San Diego Museum of Art in 2015.

March 3 - June 12, 2018: Storytelling in Indian Art: South Asian Paintings from the San Diego Museum of Art

The Royal Exiles in a Sage's Hermitage, Ramayana Suite, India, Guler, last quarter 18th century, Edwin Binney 3rd Collection, 1990.1265

With sections on the Bhagavata Purana, the Ramayana, the Ragamala, and Persian-language works, this exhibition will introduce visitors to the great literary epics of Indian culture and the paintings made to illustrate those stories. The exhibition will also explore the enduring popularity of these epics, and examine the strategies artists developed to convey narrative in a visual image. It will travel to the Princeton University Art Museum (Fall 2016) and the Blanton Museum of Art (Summer 2017) before a grand finale at the San Diego Museum of Art (Spring 2018).

Galleries 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

Over the next eighteen months, all of the permanent collection galleries will undergo a transformation and reorganization. Upstairs, galleries 16-19 will display European art up to the early 1900s, while gallery 20 will remain a space for temporary exhibitions. Downstairs, galleries 1-3 will be devoted to American art; 4-5 to special exhibitions; and 6 to California artists. Galleries 7 and 8 will remain East Asian (and we will have to see what the new curator for East Asian art plans for those spaces), while 9 and 10 will become a study center, where prints, paintings, photographs and small objects usually kept in our storerooms will be made available to the public. 20th century art will move into galleries 11, 12 and 13; 12 and 13 will also be shared with Indian, Southeast Asian and Iranian art. Overall the flow of the galleries and the spaces allotted to the different collections should be much improved, and we are excited for the changes.

Curator’s
Web Stop

While Art Stops are now only once a month on the days the Museum is free to San Diegans, Marika thinks quarterly Web Stops online can continue. Her first Web Stop shows us her incredible exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Click to see the exhibition galleries at the Met and/or click to listen to the audio tour. Click to hear Marika's Symposium presentation for the Deccan exhibition at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 11-12, 2015. Marika spoke on Golconda architecture (day 2, session 1, 29:18).

Exhibition at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art

April 14 - July 26, 2015: Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1700: Opulence and Fantasy

This exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was the first to concentrate on the Deccan region and the five great sultanates that ruled there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Detail of Kalamkari hanging, ca 1640-50. — Kalamkari Hanging, detail, Golconda region of Coromandel Coast, ca. 1640–50. Mordant-painted and -dyed and resist-dyed plain-weave cotton; cat. 163, pg. 274, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Albert Blum, 1920 (20.79)

A labor of love for me, this exhibition was nearly ten years in the making and was able to gather together outstanding works of art from collections around the world (over 60 lenders participated). Five great paintings from the Binney collection of the San Diego Museum of Art were featured in the show.

Binney at the Met - Beauty with Bird 1990.489 — Five paintings from Edwin Binney 3rd Collection were featured in the exhibition, plus one more in the catalog, clockwise: *A Beauty at a Window with a Bird*, Golconda, ca. 1675, 1990.489, catalog pg.296 *Ibrahim Adil Shah, The Sultan*, ca. 1620, 1990.440 *The noble Ikhlas Khan with a petition*, ca. 1650, 1990.442 *A Young Prince in a Family Setting*, ca. 1600, 1990.459 *Sultan 'Abu'l Hasan Qutb Shah Standing*, ca. 1675, 1990.491 A Dervish, Seated in Contemplation, ca. 1650, 1990.445

Dr. Marika Sardar

Associate Curator of Southern Asian and Islamic Arts

Curator’s Web Stop

Associate Curator of
Southern Asian and Islamic Arts

Curator’s
Web Stop