Newhouse Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College
Welcomes Visiting Art History Scholar

Professor Klimburg-Salter will be the 2009-2010 Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities.

WELLESLEY, Mass. – The Newhouse Center for the Humanities will welcome Deborah Klimburg-Salter, professor for Asian art history at the Institute of Art History of the University of Vienna, to campus this fall as the 2009- 2010 Mary L. Cornille Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities.

Klimburg-Salter, who specializes in the art history of South and Central Asia, will be in residence for the fall semesters of 2009 and 2010, and will teach the undergraduate course “The Buddha’s Biography: Buddhist Narrative Art in India” this fall and another on the Indo-Tibetan temple in 2010. She will also lead a faculty seminar, “The Role of the Museum Between Nationalism and Globalism,” focused on a range of issues, from anthropological to art historical, that pertain to the evolving role of the museum in the 21st century and the crucial importance of cultural institutions in countries that have been traumatized by political and military conflict.

“Her academic expertise in the art history of South and Central Asia combined with her hands-on experience on the UNESCO International Coordination Committee for the safeguarding of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage give her a rich and nuanced perspective on the thorny and topical debates over who owns the cultural heritage of war torn countries such as Afghanistan – one that will be of interest to faculty in a variety of different departments and disciplines on the Wellesley campus (and the greater Boston area),” said Carol Dougherty, the William R. Kenan, Jr. professor and chair of classical studies and director of the Newhouse Center.

Klimburg-Salter is director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Documentation of Inner and South Asia at the University of Vienna and has done extensive written and field work on the art and archaeology of Afghanistan, Northern India and Tibet. She has previously served as visiting or affiliated professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the Oriental Institute at the University of Oxford and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris.

Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world. Its 500-acre campus near Boston is home to 2,300 undergraduate students from all 50 states and 68 countries. For more information, go to www.wellesley.edu.

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