Dr Neeraja Poddar

The Ira Brind and Stacey Spector Associate Curator of South Asian Art at Philadelphia Museum of Art

Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies

Biography:

Neeraja Poddar is The Ira Brind and Stacey Spector Associate Curator of South Asian Art at Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University. She was the Andrew W. Mellon—Anne d’Harnoncourt Postdoctoral Fellow in South Asian Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and is now Curator at The City Palace Museum, Udaipur.

Poddar co-curated the reinstallation of the South Asian galleries at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She also worked on a book project related to illustrated manuscripts of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa as well as a catalogue of The City Palace Museum, Udaipur’s silver collection.

Research Area/s:

South Asian illustrated manuscripts and early modern Indian painting.

Research Interests:

Historiography, the materiality of books, the relationships between text and image and the transmission and circulation of narratives. As well as the painting traditions of Nepal with particular emphasis on Vaiṣṇava imagery.

Selected Publications:

Epic Tales from Ancient India: Paintings from The San Diego Museum of Art (San Diego Museum of Art, 2017).
Bismillah Khan: The Shehnai Maestro (Rupa Publications, 2004).

Chapters and Articles

“In the Age of Non-Mechanical Reproduction: Manuscript Variation in Early Modern South Asia”, Manuscript Studies 4/1, 1.18 (2019).
“‘Reframing’ the Bhāgavata: Preservation and Reuse in South Asian Illustrated Manuscripts”, The Journal of Hindu Studies 11/2, 116–132 (2018).
“Krishna goes to War: Translating the Bhāgavata’s Battle Scenes,” International Journal of Hindu Studies 22/1, 105-122 (2018).