Virginia Commonwealth University

Graduate Student, Art History

PhD Candidate

School of the Arts

Thesis Title: Dipankara Buddha and the Samyak Mahadana Festival in Nepal: Performing the Sacred in Newar Art

About

Kerry Lucinda Brown is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University. She received her BA and MA from the Department of History of Art at The Ohio State University. A specialist in South Asian and Himalayan Art, her primary area of concentration focuses on Newar art in Nepal’s Kathmandu Valley. Her work examines Newar Buddhist art within the larger context of South Asian Buddhist heritage. Her dissertation research on the visual imagery of Dipankara Buddha in Nepal, specifically in the context of the Samyak Mahadana festival, explores the dynamic relationship between art and ritual performance in Newar artistic and cultural traditions.

Since 1999, Kerry has traveled throughout South Asia and the Himalayas, receiving numerous grants and fellowships to study and conduct research in the region. Last year, she was named a Fulbright Scholar to Nepal where she successfully completed ten months of fieldwork in the Kathmandu Valley for her dissertation. Kerry has been invited to lecture on Buddhist visual traditions of South Asia and the Himalayas in various institutions in the United States, India, and Nepal. She has also contributed essays to major museum exhibition catalogues, including _Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art_ and _Pilgrimage and Faith: Buddhism, Christianity and Islam_.

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