From Field to Museum

By 1956, the Philadelphia Museum of Art had acquired a major collection of Indian sculpture from Stella Kramrisch and appointed her as the Curator for Indian art. In postwar United States the institutional emplacement of Kramrisch and her collection represented (as Ananda Coomaraswamy was for a preceding generation) a deepening engagement with Indian art at museums at a time of widening interest in Asian cultures, including through university Area Studies Programs. This article examines the significance of Kramrisch and her collection, tracing the intertwining of her collecting and research activities during her early fieldwork, which contributed to the elevation of medieval sculpture within the field of Indian art history, and the way the acquisition and appointment relied on the alignment of multiple priorities and collective efforts.