Royal Nepal 1930-36 Through the Lens of Richard Go

Marcella Nesom Sirhandi

In the early 1980s, when few South Asian art historians thought seriously about the art of the colonial period or beyond, Marcella Sirhandi chose Abdur Rahman Chughtai, a modern South Asian artist, for her PhD dissertation at The Ohio State University. Because Chughtai's style and subjects were so diverse the research required an investigation of art from Iran, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh from the Sultanate Period to the time of Chughtai's death in 1975. Sirhandi continued to publish books, essays and journal articles on contemporary Indian and Pakistani art. After the publication of Contemporary Painting in Pakistan, her first book, Sirhandi curated a number of exhibitions of Asian art and wrote catalogs for them.