In memoriam

Frederick Asher 1941-2021

Rick Asher passed away a month after his eightieth birthday and after having successfully battled cancer. Many know him as a significant scholar of eastern Indian art, an area he has long worked on as witnessed by his first book (The Art of Eastern India, 300-800. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1980).

His early work also included ground-breaking contributions as, for instance, in tracing the scattering of artistic material into various collections by using British archival records (‘The Former Broadly Collection, Bihar Sharif’, Artibus Asiae 32, 1970, pp. 105-22). More recently he embarked on a deep study of geology so he could understand the quarry sites from which material was extracted to create India’s many sculptures (‘Stone and the Production of Images’, East and West 48, 1998, pp. 313-328).

The subject of Buddhist sites also long remained important to him as witnessed by many articles as well as his 2008 survey volume of Bodhgaya and his recent volume, Sarnath: A Critical History of the Place Where Buddhism Began which was published by the Getty Research Institute in 2020. He had begun to share across various platforms his recent engagements with the study of visual culture of Indian Ocean trade before 1500. While significant work has now been completed about the later developments of this trade, looking for new ways to define translocal and local interactions is only just emerging. This was a natural next project for Asher in some ways as he had worked throughout his career to define the significance of South Asia within the greater understanding of global developments. Professor Asher retired from teaching art history at the University of Minnesota after many decades; he also served as the department’s chair and was Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. His contributions outside of the University also included an astonishing amount of service, much at the highest levels. His decades of service for the American Institute of Indian Studies (eventually serving as its president) may be best known. He deeply believed in its core mission of supporting scholarship and developing opportunities for the study of South Asia by the next generation of scholars. AIIS’s Center for Art and Archaeology contains much of the phenomenal field work documentation amassed by him as well as that of his wife, Cathy Asher, a significant scholar of Indo-Islamic art and culture. He enthusiastically mentored students and colleagues across the world. Besides all else that can be said, Professor Asher was a consummate scholar, teacher and colleague. He will be much missed.

Janice Leoshko

Frederick Asher with his wife Cathy, Bodhgaya, 2018. University of Texas at Austin