Asian Art and History

Lecture

Asian Art and History The Taj Mahal:
From Mausoleum to Monument

Yael Rice, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History and Asian Languages and Civilizations, Amherst College

This richly illustrated talk will trace the history of the planning and design of the Taj Mahal, the white marble-clad mausoleum that the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan (reigned 1628-56) had constructed for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, in Agra, India, between 1631 and 1648. This lecture will go over the various areas of expertise — from architectural and calligraphic to horticultural and hydraulic—that informed the creation of this structure and its surroundings, as well as explore the political significance of the complex as a whole. Finally, we will turn to the Taj Mahal’s post-17th-century afterlife to consider how this royal mausoleum became the UNESCO World Heritage Monument that it is today. 

This presentation is part of the Asian Art and History series.

Image: Architectural Drawing, ca. 1820. Made in Dehli. Water color on paper with embossed borders. 12 ccm x 19.5 ccm.

Yael Rice

Yael Rice

Yael Rice is an associate professor of art history and Asian languages and civilizations at Amherst College. She specializes in the art and architecture of South Asia, Central Asia, and Iran, with a particular focus on manuscripts and other portable arts of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. Her recent publications include The Brush of Insight: Artists and Agency at the Mughal Court (University of Washington Press, 2023) and “The Mughal Imperial Image between Manuscript and Print,” in the Routledge Companion to Global Renaissance Art (Routledge, 2024). She is also co-editor of Readings on Painting, From 75 Years of Marg (Marg, 2024), and co-curator of Painting the Persianate World: Portable Images on Paper, Cloth and Clay (Smith College Museum of Art, February–July 2024).