Art Histories, Across and Within: The Rockefeller Collection at Asia Society
Museum Salon Series: Arathi Menon in conversation with Xiaohan Du
Thursday, October 8, 2026, 6:30-8pm
$15 Members | $25 Nonmembers | Discounted Students and Seniors

Join Asia Society on Thursday, October 8, for Art Histories, Across and Within: The Rockefeller Collection at Asia Society, an engaging conversation exploring how ideas, artistic traditions, and inspiration traveled across Asia long before today’s hyperconnected world. Drawing on works from the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, featured in the current exhibition Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon—Celebrating 70 Years of Asia Society and the Rockefeller Legacy, the discussion considers these works as visual archives of the networks that connected people and cultures across the continent. Discover the fascinating stories of exchange, innovation, and human connection they reveal—and the many paths through which ideas traveled across the premodern world.

Speaker bios:

Arathi Menon is Associate Professor of Art History at Hamilton College. She is a specialist in the histories of South Asian art. Her research focuses on the material culture of the premodern Indian Ocean World, from the ancient through to the early modern periods.

Menon’s current book project, Building Cosmopolitanism: Hipped & Gabled Malabar, examines the art histories of the Malabar coast of southwestern India, where a particular convergence of sociocultural, economic, and political factors shaped the development of the region’s distinctive hipped and gabled architectural style. The book offers a new framework for understanding the medieval art and architectural history of Malabar’s churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples.

Menon teaches a range of courses in the department of Art History and in the Asian Studies and Middle East/Islamicate Worlds Studies programs. These include courses on the visual portrayal of stories, epics, and oral traditions, histories of architecture and sculpture, and archives of collecting, circulation, and exchange.

Xiaohan Du is the John H. Foster assistant curator of pre-modern Asian art at Asia Society Museum. Xiaohan received her PhD from Columbia University; in her dissertation she wrote about how calligraphy functioned as a visual and diplomatic currency in the life of a Chinese monk who emigrated to Japan in 1299.

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