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Assistant Professor of Visual Arts, Harish and Bina Shah School of Humanities, Ashoka University
Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2024- 2025).
PhD in Visual Arts / School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi, India, 2024.
Mrinalini Sil is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts in the Harish and Bina Shah School of Humanities at Ashoka University. An art historian of Early Modern South Asia, her research and teaching focus on Mughal and Provincial Mughal paintings, patronage, the long eighteenth century, and the history of collecting. She received her PhD in Visual Arts from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Stemming from her doctoral research, her current book project, provisionally titled ‘Arts in the Age of Transition: Power, Politics and Culture in Murshidabad Paintings from Early Modern Bengal’ (under contract with Brill | De Gruyter), examines the various cultural agents and socio-political factors that shaped the production and collection of art in early modern Bengal. She has widely published and presented her research on Murshidabad painting and was part of the curatorial team for the exhibition Rajas, Nawabs and Firangees: Treasures from the French and Indian Archives, 1750–1850.
Prior to joining Ashoka University, Mrinalini held the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (2024–25). Her research project, ‘The Forms and Functions of Delftware Tiles in the Jaina Temples of Early Modern Bengal’, examined the material culture surrounding the use of Delftware tiles in Murshidabad, Bengal, to reflect on global tastes and the demand for porcelain in the early modern world.
Architecture of Mobility: The Curious Case of Delftware Tiles in the Jaina Temples of Early Modern Bengal in Aziatische Kunst (Brill), Vol 56, no 1, 2026.
“Aesthetics of Jain Mercantile Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Bengal: Exploration of the Jagat Seth Ragamalas from Eighteenth Century Murshidabad”, in Phyllis Granoff and Nandita Punj (eds) Tales and Tellings: Paintings from the Jain Tradition, Marg, Vol. 76, no 4, 2025.
“Visual Epistemes and Musical Vocabularies: The Rijksmuseum’s Eighteenth-Century Devagāndhāri Rāginī ,” in Aziatische Kunst (Brill), Vol 55, no 2, 2025.
ISSN: 2543-1749.
“ Jean Baptiste Gentil’s ‘Mughalesque’ Albums : A Study in the Visual Nodes and Aesthetic Modes of Firanghi Paintings in Eighteenth-Century India”, in Valerie Kobi , Kristel Smentek, Chonja Lee (eds) Networks and Practices of Connoisseurship in the Global Eighteenth Century, (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter,2024).
“Imaging Courtly Cosmopolitanism and Making of an Imperial Collection : An Exploration of Robert Clive’s Ganjifa Cards from Eighteenth-Century Bengal.” in Motion : Migrations, Proceedings of 35th CIHA World Congress ( Sao Paulo : CIHA Publications, 2023).
Co contributor to the section “ Sacred Texts” in the Exhibition Catalogue of Rajas, Nawabs and Firangees 1750-1850 : Treasures from the French and Indian Archives (New Delhi: National Museum Publications, 2020).
“Imaging of Courtly Life : Bengal Nizamat in Murshidabad Painting (18th Century)” in Raziuddin Aquil, Tilottama Mukherjee (eds) An Earthly Paradise : Trade, Politics and Culture in Early Modern Bengal, (New Delhi: Manohar Books, 2019).
Recipient of the Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (2024-25).
Recipient of the Indian Council of Social Science Research ( ICSSR) Full Term Doctoral Fellowship (2021-2023).
Recipient of Getty Travel Grant to attend the CIHA World Congress “Motion : Migrations” in São Paulo (held in January 2022).
Recipient of the INLAKS Research Travel Grant 2020 from the INLAKS Shivdasani Foundation.
Recipient of UK Travel Award, 2017 and Small Study and Research Grant from the Nehru Trust for Indian Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum (NTICVA), London.
