material techniques from actual artists creating in and around the galleries. She is intrigued by the ‘magic of transformation’ permeating the Festival (p. 11) and the effect this had on audience expectations and reactions. Brown lays out the ways in which the ambitious goals of the Festival compressed multiple events and temporalities – past, present and future – into a dizzying, unpredictable disarray that invited new modes of awareness as much as it prevented any sense of cohesion and continuity. The Festival also aimed to educate visitors about ‘traditional’ Indian culture, an objective amplified by casting visiting artists as performative individuals acting in the exhibition spaces. Brown examines the phenomenon and politics of human display from a range of historical perspectives. Through compelling case studies, she provides productive ways to think about the implications of such displays for both observers and participants. Drawing attention to the creative ways in which some Indian artist-performers consciously disrupted, challenged and positively personalized their experiences, she counters the temptation to categorically victimize them. She imaginatively reconstructs the lived experience of artists and audiences and their social exchanges in the midst of a variety of temporary, dynamic, constantly changing exhibition spaces. The fourth chapter on entrepreneurial exhibits moves away from the theme of temporality to examine the collaborative opportunities the Festival offered artists in India and the US. The Golden Eye exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt in New York City was an ambitious undertaking that paired Indian artists with American designers in the hope that mutually enriching creative business ventures might develop, especially on the Indian side. The venture was, however, ultimately unsuccessful. There were conflicting goals, and the venture was caught between India’s government-heavy outdated economic paradigms and the nascent stages of a global neo-liberal climate that favoured entrepreneurial independence. The cultural and economic inequalities between India and the US at this particular juncture were ultimately not in the Indian artists’ favour. That relative imbalance of power also informs the fifth chapter, where Brown reviews three exhibitions of Indian contemporary art (two of which drew from one American collection) that were not contemporary in the truest sense, prompting the chapter title, ‘The Contemporary, at a Distance’. Departing from other Festival exhibitions, these were intended to promote Indian contemporary art, but the choice of art and artists was filtered through selective sensibilities that did not accept Indian art as truly coeval with its EuroNorth American counterparts. Ultimately, the very notion of contemporary Indian art was at odds with the Festival objectives. Brown observes that the ‘tension embodied in the “distant contemporary” lies not in the paintings exhibited in these three shows but instead in the international exchange of the Festival, its diffuse cultural diplomatic mission, and the struggle to challenge the canonical range of art by bringing India’s recent art to American audiences’ (p. 125). The sixth and final chapter, ‘Setting Up the Tent Anew’, is a brief reflection on lessons learned. As she reviews the seismic changes in global art, culture, politics, history and economics that have occurred since the mid-1980s, Brown concludes that the Festival of India, with its myriad aspirational goals, could never be replicated. Its challenges were a product of the unique mid-1980s political and cultural context, and despite its imperfections, Brown effectively helps us understand the Festival’s enduring importance for the field today. I only wish parts of this chapter had come earlier, as it provides a useful compass with which to navigate the complexities of her argument. Brown’s book is relatively short at 160 pages of text, with generous black-and-white and colour illustrations and useful citations. Presumably this was meant to keep it readable, affordable and accessible, all welcome goals. It represents a distillation of a multitude of ideas and insights – the book could easily have been double the length – and at times I wished for more elaboration of her examples, evidence and accounts of artist and visitor reactions. Brown’s prose is engaging and clear, but the pastiche-like organization is occasionally dense, especially in the second and third chapters, which interweave a lot of information. These small observations aside, this is an intelligent and innovative book thatmakes an important contribution to the study of South Asian and global art history. It should be required reading for all South Asian art and cultural historians interested in this era, as well as for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

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书评

来自实际艺术家在画廊内外创作的材料技术。她对贯穿整个电影节的“转变魔法”（第 11 页）及其对观众期望和反应的影响很感兴趣。布朗展示了电影节雄心勃勃的目标如何将过去、现在和未来的多个事件和时间压缩成一种令人眼花缭乱、不可预测的混乱，它邀请了新的意识模式，同时阻止了任何凝聚力和连续性。艺术节还旨在教育参观者了解“传统”印度文化，通过将参观艺术家塑造为在展览空间中表演的表演者来扩大这一目标。布朗从一系列历史角度审视了人类展示的现象和政治。通过引人注目的案例研究，她提供了富有成效的方式来思考此类展示对观察者和参与者的影响。提请注意一些印度艺术家表演者有意识地破坏、挑战和积极个性化他们的经历的创造性方式，她抵制了明确地使他们受害的诱惑。她在各种临时的、动态的、不断变化的展览空间中，富有想象力地重构了艺术家和观众的生活体验和他们的社会交流。关于创业展览的第四章从时间性的主题出发，考察艺术节为印度和美国的艺术家提供的合作机会。在纽约市 Cooper Hewitt 举办的 Golden Eye 展览是一项雄心勃勃的事业，它将印度艺术家与美国设计师配对，希望能够发展相互丰富的创意商业企业，尤其是在印度方面。然而，这次冒险最终以失败告终。存在相互冲突的目标，该企业在印度政府主导的过时经济范式与支持企业独立的全球新自由主义气候的萌芽阶段之间陷入困境。在这个特殊时刻，印度和美国之间的文化和经济不平等最终对印度艺术家不利。权力的相对不平衡也告诉了第五章，布朗回顾了三场并非真正意义上的当代印度当代艺术展览（其中两场来自美国的一个收藏），从而促成了这一章的标题“远距离的当代艺术”。与其他艺术节展览不同，这些展览旨在推广印度当代艺术，但艺术和艺术家的选择是通过选择性敏感性过滤的，这些敏感性不接受印度艺术与欧洲北美同行真正同时代。最终，当代印度艺术的概念与艺术节的目标不一致。布朗观察到，“遥远的当代”所体现的“张力”不在于这三场展览中展出的画作，而在于艺术节的国际交流，其分散的文化外交使命，以及通过将印度最近的艺术带给美国观众来挑战经典艺术范围的斗争（第 125 页）。第六章也是最后一章“重新搭建帐篷”，是对经验教训的简要反思。当她回顾自 1980 年代中期以来全球艺术、文化、政治、历史和经济发生的翻天覆地的变化时，布朗得出结论，有着无数理想目标的印度节永远无法复制。它的挑战是 1980 年代中期独特的政治和文化背景的产物，尽管它不完美，但布朗有效地帮助我们了解了节日对当今领域的持久重要性。我只希望本章的部分内容早点出现，因为它提供了一个有用的指南针，可以用来导航她论点的复杂性。布朗的书相对较短，只有 160 页的文字，有大量的黑白和彩色插图以及有用的引文。大概这是为了保持它的可读性、可负担性和可访问性，所有这些都是受欢迎的目标。它代表了大量想法和见解的提炼——这本书的长度很容易翻倍——有时我希望更多地阐述她的例子、证据以及对艺术家和访客反应的描述。布朗的散文引人入胜，条理清晰，但模仿似的组织偶尔也很密集，尤其是在第二和第三章中，交织了大量信息。撇开这些小观察不谈，这是一本聪明而创新的书，对南亚和全球艺术史的研究做出了重要贡献。