© Columbia University Press
Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Post-Colonial India
July, 2004
Cloth, 432 pages, 132 illus
ISBN: 978-0-231-12998-5
$80.50
"Guha-Thakurta has the rare ability to present extremely passionate issues in clear prose and to offer a well-thought-out position...This wonderful book will surely play an essential role in all future discussions of Indian art." — David Carrier, CAA Reviews
"This is an important new scholarly work... An astutely written analysis." — Helen Asquine Fazio, Journal of Asian Studies
"This is an important book for all libraries with collections in art history, archaeology and South Asian studies." — Lynn Zastoupil, Journal of Asian History
"Tapati Guha-Thakurta's book is a far-reaching study whose implications go well beyond in the case of India." — Julie F. Codell, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History
"Compulsory reading for those who study South Asia." — Contemporary South Asia
"Guha-Thakurta provides the most penetrating and conceptual frame for the institutional history of Indian art." — Valdas Jaskunas, ACTA Orientalia Vilnensia
"Brilliantly argued and lucidly written, Monuments, Objects, Histories articulates new horizons and objects of knowledge both within and beyond disciplinary boundaries, powerfully redefining the very structure and direction of contemporary debates in and on history, art history, archaeology, and politics." — Donald Preziosi, Oxford University, author of Brain of the Earth's Body: Art, Museums, & the Phantasms of Modernity
"A probing work that urges us to ponder the creation of the official canon of Indian art, and examines the centrality of archaeology and art in shaping the imperial command, the self-representation of the nation, and its postcolonial role. A 'must read' for art historians." — Vidya Dehejia, Columbia University
"Monuments, Objects, Histories presents new, imaginative, and incisive analyses of the political pasts of India's art and architecture. Guha-Thakurta's impressively researched and wide-ranging book will be compulsory reading for students of colonial and postcolonial nationalism in South Asia." — Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago
"The production of knowledge about monuments in India reveals how art history defines fact and fiction. Because similar dynamics animate the discipline elsewhere, the motes in their collective eyes helps us perceive the beams in our own." — Robert Nelson, University of Chicago