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Robert Linrothe

Office: Kresge 3-530
r-linrothe@northwestern.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Rob Linrothe is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Northwestern University. He received a Ph. D. in Art History from the University of Chicago. In 2008-2009 he was a Scholar-in-Residence at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Through his field work, Prof. Linrothe has become a specialist in the Buddhist art of the Himalayas. He has concentrated on the pre-modern mural painting of Ladakh and Zangskar (Indian Himalayas) and the contemporary revival of monastic painting in Amdo (China, northeastern cultural Tibet).

From 2002 – 2004, Prof. Linrothe served as the inaugural curator of Himalayan art at the Rubin Museum of Art [RMA] which opened to the public in October of 2004. During his tenure at RMA, Prof. Linrothe authored two catalogs to coincide with the museum's opening exhibitions: Paradise & Plumage: Chinese Connections in Tibetan Arhat Painting; and, with Jeff Watt, Demonic Divine: Himalayan Art and Beyond. A third, Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas was published in 2006. Recently, an essay on the early 17th century Central Tibetan paintings directed by Taranatha was accepted for publication (2011) in Artibus Asiae, and an article entitled "Skirting the Bodhisattva: Fabricating Visionary Art," accepted for publication in the on-line journal, Etudes mongoles et siberiennes, centrasiatiques et tibetaines.

In May 2010, he presented a paper, "Travel Albums and Revisioning Narratives: A Case Study in the Getty's Fleury 'Cachemire' Album on 1908," in a symposium at the Getty Research Institute titled "Zoom Out: The Making and Unmaking of the 'Orient' through Photography."