Photograph from the Macnabb Collection of a street scene in Lahore, taken by an unknown photographer, most likely during the 1890s.


On Thursday, November 9 at 7 pm, as part of our public festival Lahore on my Mind, join poet Meena Alexander in the Gallery for a public reading of work specially selected for their resonance with our current exhibition.

Lahore on my Mind is a public festival, curated by art historian Sugata Ray, that moves between the past and the present to explore the early modern, colonial, and contemporary cultural worlds of South Asia. Featuring artist interventions and discussions with thinkers, curators, and artists from the United States, Europe, and South Asia. This interdisciplinary event takes John Lockwood Kipling: Arts & Crafts in the Punjab and London as a starting point to reflect on the role of visual arts, performative practices, and literary cultures in shaping South Asia’s aesthetics, arts, and cultural politics in a globalized world.

We are pleased to extend complimentary need-based community tickets by request to all ticketed events. To learn more, please email public.programs@bgc.bard.edu.

Leading support for Public Programs at Bard Graduate Center comes from Gregory Soros and other generous donors.

Meena Alexander, an internationally acclaimed poet, was born in Allahabad, India and lives and works in New York City where she is Distinguished Professor of English, Hunter College /Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her poems have been set to music, most recently by the Finnish composer Oli Kortekangas for the 2017 Naantali music festival. Her most recent book Birthplace with Buried Stones appeared in 2013; two new books are forthcoming in 2018: a volume of poetry, Atmospheric Embroidery (TriQuarterly Books/ Northwestern University Press) and the anthology Name me a Word: Indian Writers Reflect on Writing (Yale University Press).

Thursday, November 9
18 West 86th Street

7 pm: Meena Alexander Poetry Reading

Meena Alexander is an internationally acclaimed poet who was born in Allahabad, India and lives and works in New York City.


Friday, November 10
38 West 86th Street

7 pm: Openings
Richard Davis, Associate Professor of Religion, Bard College
Shahzia Sikander, visual artist
Sadia Abbas, Associate Professor, Department of English, Rutgers-Newark

Saturday, November 11
38 West 86th Street

12 pm: Empire, Post-Empire, Neo-Empire
Risha Lee, Independent Curator and Scholar
Gyan Prakash, Professor of History, Princeton University
Meena Alexander, poet, scholar, and writer
Sabrina Dhawan, screenwriter and producer

2 pm: Outside Kipling’s Wonder House
Tasneem Zakaria Mehta, Honorary Director, Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai, India
Nadeem Omar Tarar, Director, National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan
Navina Najat Haidar, Curator of Islamic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

FREE with an RSVP
18 West 86th Street

4 pm: Interventions in the Gallery: Alok Vaid-Menon
Alok Vaid-Menon is a gender non-conforming performance artist, writer, educator, and entertainer.