Laura Weinstein is Ananda Coomaraswamy Curator of South Asian and Islamic Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Since arriving at the MFA in 2009 she has lead the reinstallation of the Museum’s South and Southeast Asian (2011) and Islamic art (2019) collections and curated several exhibitions of Islamic and South Asian art, including a touring exhibition of the MFA’s collection of Arts from Islamic Cultures.
She is the author of Ink, Silk & Gold: Islamic Art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2015); Megacities Asia (2016); MFA Highlights: Arts of South Asia (2020), and a range of scholarly publications dealing with illustrated Persian manuscripts and the collecting of Islamic art. In the field of contemporary art, she curated Megacities Asia (2016) and Reimagining Home: Photographs by Bahman Jalali and Gohar Dashti (2020).
Weinstein earned her PhD from Columbia University in 2011, working on the ways in which 16th-century Persian manuscripts produced at sites on India’s Deccan Plateau adapted and transformed Persianate painting styles, a subject that continues to fascinate her. Forthcoming are articles on the photographs of Maharaja Sawai Ram Singh II, on Kannada captions in a Deccani Persian manuscript, and about Ananda K. Coomaraswamy’s engagement with modern dance.
Primary Research Interest:
South Asian manuscripts and paintings
Publications:
