Kalyani Madhura Ramachandran
Kalyani studies the art of premodern South Asia. Her dissertation The Art of Phanigiri, ca. 1st- 4th centuries CE highlights the earliest sculptural history of Deccan (south) India through an investigation of Buddhist complexes in ancient Andhra. Her second project focuses on the sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
Prior to joining Columbia, Kalyani was a Research Assistant in the Department of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she conducted research for five exhibitions including Tree and Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE – 400 CE. She has a B.A. from the University of Delhi where she received the Department of History Prize and an MPhil from the University of Oxford on the Rhodes Scholarship.
Kalyani is the 2023 – 2024 Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the 2024 – 2025 Asher Family Fellow awarded by the American Institute of Indian Studies.
Publications:
“Buddhist Art and Architecture in Southern India.” Oxford Bibliographies. Forthcoming [co-authored with Akira Shimada].
“The Representation of a Universal Monarch in Early Buddhist Āndhra.” In The Long Arc of South Asian Art – A Reader in Honor of Vidya Dehejia, edited by Annapurna Garimella, 139 – 149. New Delhi: Women Unlimited Press in association with The Marg Foundation, 2022.