{ "153231-21915480": { "datetime_modified":"20261019T150546", "datetime_start":"20261023T160000", "datetime_end":"20261023T173000", "has_end_time":1, "date_start":"2026-10-23", "date_end":"2026-10-23", "time_start":"16:00:00", "time_end":"17:30:00", "time_zone":"America\/Detroit", "event_title":"In the Shadow of Empire: Calcutta\u2019s Victoria Memorial and its Cast of Moving Statuary", "occurrence_title":"", "combined_title":"In the Shadow of Empire: Calcutta\u2019s Victoria Memorial and its Cast of Moving Statuary: Tapati Guha-Thakurta", "event_subtitle":"Tapati Guha-Thakurta", "event_type":"Presentation", "event_type_id":"16", "description":"With a focus on Calcutta\u2019s landmark monument \u2013 the most grandiose of the memorials to the Queen of all the ones built across the British imperial territories \u2013 this lecture addresses the theme of the end of empire through the persistence and proliferation of the genre of civic public statuary, its shifting cast of characters, and its movements across time and space. It is on the grounds of the Victoria Memorial \u2013 in the lingering shadows of a bygone empire \u2013 that a brood of imperial statues have found a safe haven, quietly living out their post-imperial lives of oblivion in a time and place where the empire is long gone but its hauntings remain. \n\nIn the recent past, we have seen how such hauntings of the past can suddenly return to a body of long-standing statues of American Confederate leaders, slave owners and imperialists, bringing on them the wrath of anti-white supremacist protests that began to rage across Western cities and universities during 2020. What the Black Lives Matter movement did was to return attention in India to the long-forgotten specimens of colonial statuary, mostly hidden away in remote locations of our cities - raising the issue again, after over 75 years of Independence, of their rights to remain in the spaces where they still stand. The afterlives of these relics of empire is a central theme of this lecture, as it explores various moments in the travels, dislocations and relocations of Calcutta\u2019s imperial statues, while charting a small parallel history of Indian statue-making over these transitional decades of the last years of British rule and the coming of Independence.\n\nTapati Guha-Thakurta was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta University, and the University of Oxford. She is currently an Honorary Professor of History at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC) and was its former Director from 2012 to 2017. She has written widely on the art and cultural history of modern India, and has held several visiting fellowships abroad. Her three main books are The Making of a New \u2018Indian\u2019 Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Columbia University Press, and Permanent Black, 2004), and In the Name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of Contemporary Kolkata (Delhi: Primus Books, 2015). She has also had a parallel career as exhibition curator and archivist, and has helped build a large digital image archive on the visual cultures of modern and contemporary Bengal at the CSSSC. She has co-edited three anthologies of essays \u2013 Theorising the Present: Essays for Partha Chatterjee (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011); New Cultural Histories of India: Materiality and Practices (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013); and How Secular is Art? On the Politics of Art, History and Religion in South Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Among her other professional work is the preparation of a dossier on the Durga Pujas of Kolkata for the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, which has brought to the festival the coveted UNESCO inscription under its List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in December 2021.", "occurrence_notes":null, "guid":"153231-21915480@events.umich.edu", "permalink":"http:\/\/events.umich.edu\/event\/153231", "building_id":"1000175", "building_name":"Haven Hall", "campus_maps_id":"542", "room":"Eldersveld Room (5670)", "location_name":"Haven Hall", "has_livestream":0, "cost":"", "tags":["Art","Asia","European","Michigan Arts Festival","Museum","Visual Arts"], "website":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/umichmsp", "sponsors":[ { "group_name":"Museum Studies Program", "group_id":"1801", "website":"" }, { "group_name":"History of Art", "group_id":"1034", "website":"http:\/\/www.lsa.umich.edu\/histart\/events" }, { "group_name":"Comparative Literature", "group_id":"1103", "website":"" }, { "group_name":"Center for South Asian Studies", "group_id":"3273", "website":"http:\/\/www.ii.umich.edu\/csas" }, { "group_name":"Asian Languages and Cultures", "group_id":"3364", "website":"http:\/\/www.lsa.umich.edu\/asian" }, { "group_name":"Department of English Language and Literature", "group_id":"3604", "website":"" } ], "image_url":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "styled_images":{ "event_thumb":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_thumb\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_large":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_large\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_large_2x":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_large_2x\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_large_lightbox":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_large_lightbox\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "group_thumb":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/group_thumb\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "group_thumb_square":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/group_thumb_square\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "group_large":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/group_large\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "group_large_lightbox":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/group_large_lightbox\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_large_crop":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_large_crop\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_list":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_list\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_list_2x":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_list_2x\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_grid":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_grid\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_grid_2x":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_grid_2x\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_feature_large":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_feature_large\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg", "event_feature_thumb":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_feature_thumb\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153231_original-1.jpg" }, "occurrence_count":1, "first_occurrence":21915480 } , "153310-21915604": { "datetime_modified":"20261009T115609", "datetime_start":"20261023T160000", "datetime_end":"20261023T173000", "has_end_time":1, "date_start":"2026-10-23", "date_end":"2026-10-23", "time_start":"16:00:00", "time_end":"17:30:00", "time_zone":"America\/Detroit", "event_title":"RC Parents and Family Weekend Reception", "occurrence_title":"", "combined_title":"RC Parents and Family Weekend Reception", "event_subtitle":"", "event_type":"Reception \/ Open House", "event_type_id":"17", "description":"Join us in the piano lounge and the Keene Theater for a parents and family reception! Don't miss out on our RC Drama & RC Music Arts Showcase which begins directly after this event in the Keene Theater! More information can be found on the RC Arts Showcase Happening @ Michigan page. This event is free and open to the public.", "occurrence_notes":null, "guid":"153310-21915604@events.umich.edu", "permalink":"http:\/\/events.umich.edu\/event\/153310", "building_id":"1000054", "building_name":"East Quadrangle", "campus_maps_id":"54", "room":"Piano Lounge, Keene Theater", "location_name":"East Quadrangle", "has_livestream":0, "cost":"", "tags":["Ann Arbor","Community","Food","Free","In Person","Social"], "website":"https:\/\/lsa.umich.edu\/rc\/reserve-a-room-\/the-keene-theater.html", "sponsors":[ { "group_name":"Keene Theater", "group_id":"5106", "website":"https:\/\/lsa.umich.edu\/rc\/reserve-a-room-\/the-keene-theater.html" }, { "group_name":"Residential College [RC]", "group_id":"1029", "website":"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/umichrc" } ], "image_url":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "styled_images":{ "event_thumb":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/resolve\/event_thumb\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_large":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_large\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_large_2x":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_large_2x\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_large_lightbox":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_large_lightbox\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "group_thumb":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/resolve\/group_thumb\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "group_thumb_square":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/resolve\/group_thumb_square\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "group_large":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/resolve\/group_large\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "group_large_lightbox":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/resolve\/group_large_lightbox\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_large_crop":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/resolve\/event_large_crop\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_list":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/resolve\/event_list\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_list_2x":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_list_2x\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_grid":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_grid\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_grid_2x":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/resolve\/event_grid_2x\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_feature_large":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/resolve\/event_feature_large\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png", "event_feature_thumb":"https:\/\/events.umich.edu\/media\/cache\/event_feature_thumb\/media\/attachments\/2026\/10\/event_153310_original-1.png" }, "occurrence_count":1, "first_occurrence":21915604 } }