Friends Lecture: The Cosmopolitan Court: Mughal Art and Architecture at the Center of the World
The Mughal dynasty was, for centuries, synonymous with magnificent wealth, sophisticated courtly culture, and refined visual and literary arts. Founded in the 16th century in what is today Pakistan and northern India, the empire grew rapidly, reaching its greatest extent by the late 17th century, when it encompassed nearly the entire Indian subcontinent. The apogee of the empire coincided with robust global trade during the early modern period through a network of maritime and overland routes connecting the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia.
Through the exchange of precious metals, textiles, and coveted luxury materials like jade and porcelain, Mughal taste both shaped and was shaped by global markets. While this era is commonly called the Age of Exploration in a story that centers Europe, this talk places early modern India at the center of a story about the largest economy in the world, its cosmopolitan tastes, and the magnificent art it produced.
Friends members may call Visitor Experience at 612-870-6323 on December 15 to secure lecture tickets before they’re available to the public. Tickets for Mia members and the public are available on December 17.
Anna Lise Seastrand is an associate professor of art history at the University of Minnesota and early modern history professor and Union Pacific Trustee for Early Modern Studies. She’s the author of Body, History, Myth: Early Modern Murals in South India, which draws on visual and inscriptional evidence to offer a novel account of religious and social histories of southeastern India, the interplay between oral and written texts, and the body in motion. The work has received significant acclaim, including the 2025 Religion and the Arts Book Prize from the American Academy of Religion, a 2026 Honorable Mention for the Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies, and the 2022 Edward Cameron Dimock, Jr., prize from the American Institute of Indian Studies. Seastrand earned her PhD with distinction from Columbia University and previously served as a collegiate assistant professor at the University of Chicago.