U.Va.’s The Fralin Museum of Art To Host Weedon Asian Arts Lecture April 4

The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia will host Molly Aitken for an Ellen Bayard Weedon Lecture in the Arts of Asia on April 4. Her lecture, “Trajectories of Tradition: A Rajput Intervention,” which takes a closer look at how India’s court artists answered colonial-era challenges to their traditions, will be held at 6:30 p.m. in Campbell Hall, room 158.

In the early 20th century, the Bengal School undertook to rejuvenate India’s painting traditions to create a national alternative to European-style oil painting. Histories of India’s modern art recount this episode, following an established trajectory that begins with British art institutions in India and the demise of the subcontinent’s artistic traditions.

Molly Emma Aitken is an assistant professor of art history at The City College of New York. She earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2001 with a concentration on the art of South Asia.

Aitken has curated traveling exhibitions on South Asian jewelry and contemporary folk quilts, and has published numerous articles on Mughal and Rajput painting. Aitken received the Association for Asian Studies’ Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Book Prize in 2012 for her book “The Intelligence of Tradition in Rajput Court Painting.”

Currently focused on the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Aitken is looking at Mughal receptions of Rajput court arts in the context of social pleasure.

The Weedon Lectures are made possible by support from the Ellen Bayard Weedon Foundation.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For information, call 434-243-2050 or e-mail museumoutreach@virginia.edu. The Fralin Museum of Art is located at 155 Rugby Road, one block from the Rotunda.