Ms Rosemary Crill was awarded an India Travel Award (1995-96) when Deputy Curator, Indian and South-East Asian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, for a study of Rajput culture and society and their representation in Rajasthani painting.
Ms Crill was subsequently Senior Curator in the Museum’s Asian Department and now works as an independent scholar and curator.
Ms Crill, who studied Turkish art and architecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, began working in the Indian and Southeast Asian department of V&A in 1978. Basing her research on the museum’s vast textile collection, she studied the styles and techniques of traditional textiles in India and published several books, including Indian Ikat Textiles (1998), Indian Embroidery (1999) and Chintz: Indian Textiles for the West (2008). Crill also co-authored Trade, Temple and Court: Indian Textiles from the TAPI Collection (2002), with scholars Ruth Barnes and Steven Cohen.
In 2015, she co-curated Fabric of India with Divia Patel at the V&A, which presented a history of Indian textiles over two thousand years and included pieces from the museum’s collection that had previously never been displayed, along with creations by contemporary Indian designers.
Ms Crill has also conducted extensive research on Rajasthani paintings. In 1985, she travelled to Jodhpur to help the Mehrangarh Museum Trust organise its collection of paintings (and textiles). Her work from this period became the basis for her book Marwar Painting: A History of the Jodhpur Style (1999). In 2010, she co-curated an exhibition titled The Indian Portrait 1560–1860 with Kapil Jariwala, which opened at the National Portrait Gallery, London, and featured portraits from different eras and schools of Indian painting.
She was a Trustee of the NTICVA from 2004 until her retirement from the V&A.