NEW YORK, NY.- Continuing its lively series of virtual panel discussions, Asia Week New York will present Tales in Connoisseurship: Appreciating Indian Painting with an all-star panel of specialists including Brendan Lynch, co-director of London-based Oliver Forge & Brendan Lynch Ltd., Marika Sardar, PhD, Curator, The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, and collector Gursharan Sidhu, PhD. These renowned experts will reveal their personal journeys of connoisseurship within the rich and wonderful world of Indian paintings. The presentation will be held on Thursday, January 28 at 5:00 p.m. (EST), 2:00 p.m. (PST). To reserve, visit here.

Says moderator Anu Ghosh-Mazumdar, Senior Vice President & Head of the Indian & Southeast Asian Art Department at Sotheby’s: “Any collecting category requires three lynchpins to thrive and survive – the collector, the curator and the dealer. We are excited to host this panel which brings together these three key elements, showcasing the synergy of interest, curiosity, discipline, scholarship and commerce in forging connoisseurship.”

The Experts:
Anu Ghosh-Mazumdar has been with Sotheby’s since 2003 and was appointed Head of the Sotheby’s Indian & Southeast Asian Art department in 2011. A specialist for both Classical as well as Modern Indian art, she plays a key role in securing major consignments for Sotheby’s sales of Indian, Himalayan & Southeast Asian Art and Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art held in Asia, Europe and the United States. Landmark sales of Indian and Himalayan art for which she recently provided her expertise include: Indian paintings from the Estate of Dr. Claus Virch (2015 & 2016), The Richard R. and Magdalena Ernst Collection of Himalayan Art (2018), and most recently an historic collection of Mughal and Ottoman textiles from the Estate of H. Peter Stern, co-founder of the Storm King Art Center (2020). Ms. Ghosh-Mazumdar has lectured widely on the South Asian art market at both private and public international forums.

Brendan Lynch is a London-based dealer in Indian and Islamic Art. He spent twenty years at Sotheby’s, working in London and New York, and left in 1997 as Director of the Islamic and Indian Art Department. In 1998 he set up, with former colleague Oliver Forge, an art consultancy dealing and acting as agents in Indian and Islamic Art and Art of the Ancient World. The company has exhibited Indian Court Paintings annually at Asia Week New York since 2009.

Gursharan S. Sidhu holds degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Madras) and Stanford University. After a long career in academia and the technology sector at Apple Inc. and Microsoft, he now focuses on his lifelong passion for the arts of India. Currently, Sidhu is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Seattle Art Museum, as well as on the Acquisitions Committee of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the Board of Trustees of the Museum for Art and Photography (MAP), in Bengaluru. He served as co-chairman of the Board of the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington DC. He and his wife collect traditional and vernacular paintings from India and art from Mexico.

Marika Sardar is Curator at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. She previously worked at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her major exhibitions include: Interwoven Globe (2013), focusing on the worldwide textile trade from the 16th-18th century; Sultans of Deccan India, 1500-1750 (2015), examining the artistic traditions of the Muslim sultanates of central India; and Epic Tales from Ancient India (2016), looking at narrative traditions and the illustration of texts from South Asia. Ms. Sardar, along with John Seyller and Audrey Truschke, has recently published the Mughal-era Persian-language manuscript of the Ramayana in the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art.