Mallica Kumbera Landrus

Positions:

Keeper of Eastern Art; Senior Curator of Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art; Associate Professor of Indian Art 

Faculty / College Address:

Department of Eastern Art, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology

Email:

mallica.kumberalandrus@ashmus.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

Kumbera Landrus specializes in the history of art and architecture in India, particularly with regard to the intersection of art, architecture, religion, politics and socio-economics. She is especially interested in issues of cultural translation, focusing on works and built environments created for and by colonial powers, and by emerging cultures that were themselves hybrid, transnational and diasporic.

In the Ashmolean Museum, Kumbera Landrus is Keeper of the Eastern Art Department where the collections include ceramics, textiles, sculpture, metalwork, paintings, prints and other decorative arts that span more than 5,000 years of cultural and artistic development in Asia. She is also Senior Curator and her responsibilities are mainly in the area of Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian art.

Courses Taught:

As Associate Professor her remit at the University of Oxford includes teaching and research in Indian material and visual culture.

  • Trade and Exchange in Modern South Asia: Transcultural Objects, Ideas and Identities (MPhil and MSc option in South Asian Studies)
  • Encountering South Asian Sculpture (BA option in History of Art)
  • Supervision on topics in South Asian material and visual culture across the Social Sciences and Humanities. Kumbera Landrus especially welcomes topics that focus on the Ashmolean and/or other Oxford collections.
  • Contributions in core and optional courses in History, History of Art, Oriental Studies, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, and School of Geography and Environment.

Recent Publications:

2015 Parish Churches, Colonisation and Conversion in Sixteenth Century Portuguese Goa, in Parish Churches in the Early Modern World, ed. Andrew Spicer, Ashgate

2015 Yoshida Hiroshi: A Japanese artist in India, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 19 June–13 September, (Kolkata). Edited by C Pollard and M Kumbera Landrus

2015 Bengal and Modernity: Early 20th century art in India, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2 March–1 June (Kolkata). Contributors: S Bhandare, M Kumbera Landrus, A Lahiri, P Mitter and P Pal

2014 Trans-cultural Temples: Identity and Practice in Goa, in In the Shadow of the Golden Age, ed. Julia Hegewald, EB Verlag, Berlin 

2014 Sculptures from Kerala: Form and Performance, in Marg Publications, Mumbai

2011 Women Representing Women in Tradition, Trauma, Transformation: Representations of Women, Brown University

2010 Early Masterpieces, 1950s–70s in MF Husain, Brown University

2009 Goa: the Rome of the Orient in Baroque, 1620–1800: Style in the Age of Magnificence, eds. Nigel Llewellyn and Michael Snodin. London: V & A Publishing

2008 Catalogue entries on the Indian objects [Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic and Colonial] in Selected Works, Catalogue of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, pp. 48–52.

2006 Portuguese Goa – Taking Ownership with Architecture, in Vanamala, ed. Klaus Bruhn and Gerd Mevissen, Wiedler Buchverlag, Berlin, pp. 97–107.

2003 Vijayanagara Art: A Political and Historical Metaphor, in Sagar 10 (University of Texas at Austin) 78–101.

Any other information (e.g. consultancy, public engagements, positions):

Fellow, St Cross College

Trustee, Charles Wallace India Trust

Editorial Board, Studies in Asian Art and Culture Series, Universität Bonn

Mallica Kumbera Landrus