Professor Pramod Chandra (November 20, 1930 – February 19, 2016) earned his B.S. degree in 1951 at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Afterwards, he secured a position in the Department of Art and Archaeology in the Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai, and his Ph.D. was granted from the University of Bombay in 1964. He then was appointed to the University of Chicago, becoming a full professor in 1971 and remaining there until 1980, at which time he was appointed George P. Bickford Professor of Indian and South Asian Art at Harvard, from which chair he retired in 2004.

His awards and achievements include an NEH grant (1976–1980) and the distinguished Bharat Kala Bhavan Award from Banaras Hindu University. Between 1960 and 2003, he organized seven major exhibitions in India and the U.S., including “The Origins of Mughal Painting” (1976), “Indian Terracotta Sculpture” (1977), and “Meeting of Traditions in Indian Painting” (2003). He was further designated guest curator for the exhibition “The Sculpture of India” at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., during the Festival of India in 1985. In the accompanying catalogue, he provided a synoptic survey of the aesthetic sensibility, spiritual dimension, technical accomplishment, and artistic excellence of various styles, schools, and idioms of Indian work from 3000 B.C. to 1300 A.D. Thanks to him, the James Rubin collection of Indian classical music was given to the Harvard Department of Music. In 2015, he was named an honorary fellow of the Asiatic Society of Mumbai. His published works include “Studies in Indian Temple Architecture” (1975) (ed.) and “On the Study of Indian Art” (1983)