Wibke Lobo

Dr Wibke Lobo is a German historian of architecture and iconography specializing in Indian and Southeast Asian arts.

After studying Indian and South American arts in Freiburg and Berlin, Wibke Lobo completed her doctorate on the architecture and iconography of the Hindu Sun Temple at Modhera (Gujarat, India) in 1982. From 1985 to 1994, she was curator at the Museum of Indian Art in Berlin, in charge of major exhibitions including “Palace of the Gods” (1992).

Plan of the **Modhera Sun Temple** (11th century) complex: from top to bottom, *Gudhamandapa*, the shrine hall; *Sabhamandapa*, the assembly hall and *Kunda*, the reservoir. [from Alexander Kinloch Forbes, *Râs Mâlâ: Or, Hindoo Annals of the Province of Goozerat, in Western India*, Vol. 1, Richardson Bros., 1856: 255 – 256. Wikicommons].

Starting from 1986, her research focused on the art and architecture of Angkor, investigating into the representations of the Vajrayana [Esoteric] Buddhist god Hevajra and the Hindu god Vishnu-Vasudeva-Narayana. From 1994 to 2008, she was head of the South and Southeast Asia department at Berlin Ethnological Museum, curating exhibitions on Indian tribal art and contemporary Southeast Asian art. In 1997, she contributed numerous catalogues to the major exhibition of Khmer art “Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia — A Millennium of Glory” in Paris and Washington.

As the International Secretary of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists (EASEAA) for many years, she organized the EASEAA scientific conference in Berlin (1998), and in 2006 curated the exhibition “Angkor ‑Cambodia’s Divine Heritage” held in Bonn, Berlin and Zurich.

Khmerologists at the **1992 Southeast Asian Studies Conference**, Rome. Left to right: **Wibke Lobo**, **Saveros Pou, Claudia Götze-Sam,** **Andreas Reinecke**. [photographer unknown; photo courtesy **Thonevath Pou**].

From 2009 to 2011, Wibke Lobo was a research assistant for the cultural preservation project Concept for a Museum of Buddhist Art, complete with a compilation of an online list of endangered art treasures in the monasteries of the World Heritage City of Luang Prabang, Laos, with German public funding. She sat at the Advisor Board of UDAYA, Journal of Khmer Studies, since 2001.

Select Publications

The Sun-temple at Modhera: A monograph on architecture and iconography, 1982, 176 p.
Schätze indischer Kunst: Forum des Niedersächsisches Landesmuseums [Treasures of Indian Art: Forum of the Lower Saxony State Museum], Berlin, 1984, 227 p.
Several articles in Kambodschanische Kultur [Cambodian Culture], Berlin-based journal, 1986 – 2007.
Erzählende Reliefs vom Angkor Vāt: Einige Originalabgüsse im Museum für Indische Kunst Berlin [Narrative Reliefs from Angkor Wat: Selected Original Casts in the Museum of Indian Art, Berlin], Berlin, 1986, 43 p.
[editor with Marianne Yaldiz] Investigating Indian Art — Proceedings of a Symposium on the Development of Early Buddhist and Hindu Iconography (Veröffentlichungen des Museums für indische Kunst, Band 8), Berlin, 1987. ISBN 9783886092154.
[contributor with Lena Bjerregaard, Peter Bolz, Manuela Fischer, Maria Gaida, Richard Haas, Paola Ivanov, Peter Junge, Viola König, Siegmar Nahser, Anke Scharnbeck, Ingrid Pfluger-Schindlbeck, Markus Schindlbeck, Artur Simon, Ina Tautorat & Shun-chi Wu], Ethnologisches Museum Berlin [The Berlin Museum of Ethnology], Munich, Prestel-Verlag, 2003, 157 p.; repr. 2007.
[editor with Helen Ibbitson Jessup] Angkor: Göttliches Erbe Kambodschas [Angkor: Divine Heritage of Cambodia], Munich, Prestel-Verlag, 2006.
[text contributor with Thomas S. Maxwell & Jaroslav Poncar] Jaroslav Poncar, Angkor: A Tribute to the Gods in Stone, English version ed. by Sonya Rhie Mace, Mannheim, Edition Panorama, 2013, 320 p.