Nicole Roldan

Elena Pakhoutova

Adjunct Lecturer of Tibetan Art

Office: 401 Kent Hall
Office Hours: M 4-5 PM
Email: ep3329@columbia.edu

Educational Background

PhD: University of Virginia (Art History)
MA: University of Virginia (Art History)

University Diploma (MA/BA History and Historical Archival Research): Russian State University for Humanities, Moscow, Russia

Courses Taught

HSEA GU 4725 Tibetan Art and Material Culture

Area of Study

Buddhist Art, Indian Art, Tibetan Art, Cross-cultural exchanges in Inner Asia; Historical and Contemporary Himalayan Art

Research Interests

Dr. Pakhoutova is Senior Curator, Himalayan Art at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art. She has taught at University of Virginia and the Eugene Lang College, New School, New York.

Her background in Tibetan Buddhist studies informs her interdisciplinary interests in Buddhist art and ritual, art production and patronage, material culture, narrative in Tibetan visual culture, and contemporary Himalayan art.

She curated several thematic exhibitions that introduce and contextualize Tibetan and Himalayan art, including Death Is Not the End (2023), The Power of Intention: Reinventing the (Prayer) Wheel (2019).

Most recently, the ongoing traveling exhibition Gateway to Himalayan Art is an integral component of Project Himalayan Art which she co-leads with Dr. Karl Debreczeny.

Selected Publications

Himalayan Art in 108 Objects, ed. (with Karl Debreczeny). Scala and Rubin Museum of Art, 2023.

“For One and or for Many: Affluent and Common Patronage of Narrative Art in Tibet.” Material Religion 2021: vol. 17, no. 1

The Second Buddha: Master of Time, ed. The Rubin Museum, The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, and Delmonico Prestel, 2018

The All-Knowing Buddha: A Secret Guide (with Karl Debreczeny, Christian Luczanits, and Jan van Alphen). Antwerp: Museum Aan de Stroom. MAS: 2014.

“A Wondrous Great Accomplishment: a Painting of an Event.” PIATS 2010: Proceedings of the Twelfth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Vancouver, 2010. Asianart.com (2012)

Filed Under: Featured Spot, spotlight

EALAC Language Chat Club!

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures invites you to our Language Chat Clubs! Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced speaker in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese, this is a fantastic opportunity to improve your speaking skills, engage in conversation, and connect with classmates and teachers!

Mackenzie A. Fox

Field: Chinese History
Advisor: Robert Hymes
Email: maf2292@columbia.edu

Mackenzie is a Ph.D. candidate studying Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE) intellectual and cultural history. Before coming to Columbia, he received a B.A. in East Asian Languages and Cultures and History from Rutgers University, New Brunswick.

His research challenges the standard narrative that Song intellectual life was dominated by the rise of Neo-Confucianism and other systematic philosophies. Drawing on sources ranging from technical treatises to prefaces and literary miscellany, he argues that Song intellectual culture can be seen as a repertoire, with literati drawing contextually on multiple frameworks including, to cite just a few examples, empirical rigor, Confucian moral philosophy (including Neo-Confucianism), and aesthetic ideals such as self-expression, rather than rigidly adhering to any single systematic vision.

His dissertation examines how this intellectual plurality functioned in practice. It traces the development of rigorous empirical inquiry as a widely accepted mode of investigation, analyzes how systematic thinkers such as Zhu Xi engaged with particularistic and technical knowledge, and explores the defensive strategies literati used to justify their diverse interests. By attending to the gap between rhetorical justification and actual practice, the dissertation develops a new model for understanding Song intellectual culture as irreducibly plural, with implications for how we understand the nature of “orthodoxy” in both Song and later imperial China.