Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Cathleen Cummings is an Associate Professor of Art History at The University of Alabama at Birmingham.  She specializes in South Asian art, particularly in the areas of Hindu temple architecture and Indian miniature painting. Her book, Decoding a Hindu Temple: Royalty and Religion in the Iconographic Program of the Virupaksha Temple, Pattadakal, was published in 2014 by The South Asian Studies Association.  She has also published on Rajput painting and Vajrayana Buddhist art, and is currently editing a volume for Cambridge University Press on the architecture of Hinduism.  She has curated exhibitions for the Peabody-Essex Museum in Massachusetts, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at UAB.  Cummings received her doctorate in art history from The Ohio State University, and MAs from Ohio State and the University of London.  She is currently researching Hindu pilgrimage and female patronage in the context of India’s Maratha polity in the 18th century.