Orange Alert

Art History alum Laura Marsolek '13, G'15 presents lecture in Mumbai, India

Posted on: Aug. 30, 2019

Art history alum Laura Marsolek (B.A.'13, M.A.'15), and the first Luce Scholar from SU, recently presented a guest lecture at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly, the Prince of Wales Museum) in Mumbai (Bombay), India. Laura's lecture was titled "The Jewelry of Jodhpur/Marwar: At Court and in the CIty," for which she focused on 19th- and 20th-century portraits and photographs; jewelry being made today in Jodhpur; and on her own work as a jewelry maker/art historian with the Soni community/the sonars (jewelry makers in western India). Laura's abiding interest in jewelry shone brightly in her Honors thesis at SU, which won the best Humanities thesis award and was voted the best overall thesis in the Renée Crown Honors Program. She went onto become a Fulbright Scholar in Kosovo where she studied filigree jewelry traditions, and investigated religion’s role in adornment traditions and conflicting cultural ownership of the filigree craft among Kosovo’s ethnic groups. As if this were not enough, she also earned a master's degree from our Italian Renaissance Art program in Florence! Congratulations to Laura.