The Importance of Being Empress
Picturesque Servitude in the Court of Queen Victoria
Venue: Memorial Art Gallery
Date: Saturday, March 14
Time: 1:30–3:00 pm
Admission: Free and open to the public
Speaker: Dr. Siddhartha V. Shah, John Wieland, 1958 Director of the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College
At her home on the Isle of Wight, Queen Victoria (1819–1901) fashioned a miniaturized and domesticated vision of India over which she reigned as Empress. Central to this imperial fantasy was a lavish Durbar Room—an ornate banquet hall—preceded by a corridor lined with nearly one hundred painted portraits of Indian men. Her household was further animated by at least twelve turbaned attendants, whose carefully staged visibility embodied the aesthetics of empire.
While Victorian society prized the invisibility of servants, Queen Victoria demanded quite the opposite. Her Indian attendants were meant to be seen, read, and arranged—symbols in a carefully orchestrated display of power.
Join Dr. Siddhartha V. Shah for a compelling lecture examining this picturesque servitude through Queen Victoria’s personal photo albums preserved in the Royal Collection. These images reveal a long-standing imperial practice: the use of imported labor to produce contrasting social and chromatic effects—light and dark, ornament and authority, domination and subordination.
This talk offers a critical and timely reflection on visual culture, empire, and the politics of representation.
About the Speaker
Dr. Siddhartha V. Shah joined Amherst College in 2022 as the John Wieland 1958 Director of the Mead Art Museum, where he leads a globally focused exhibition program engaging some of today’s most urgent cultural and social questions. Under his leadership, the Mead achieved accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums and became the region’s first certified sensory-inclusive art museum.
Previously, Dr. Shah served as Curator of South Asian Art and Director of Education and Civic Engagement at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts. There, he installed the museum’s renowned South Asian Art Galleries, curated major exhibitions, developed programs supporting social and emotional wellbeing, expanded accessibility for visitors with invisible disabilities, and launched bilingual initiatives serving Spanish-speaking communities and English-language learners.
Before entering museum leadership, Dr. Shah spent sixteen years as an art consultant, gallery director, and independent specialist in contemporary Hindu and Buddhist art of the Kathmandu Valley. His scholarly and curatorial work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Psychology Today, The Times of India, and India Today.