Author of around 50 books, Pratapaditya Pal devoted his life on South Asian and Himalayan Art . He has done pioneering research on Himalayan art and helped to give this section of art a global recognition - through exhibitions, lecture sessions. His expertise is Tibet, Nepal and India.
              Pal was born in Bangladesh and grew up in Calcutta. He did his doctorate in fine arts and history from University of Calcutta. He completed PhD with special focus on Nepal under the guidance of historian Nihar Ranjan Roy. In 1962 he received Commonwealth Scholarship of Cambridge and got his second PhD. In 1967 he moved to USA and took curatorial position at the world famous Museum of Fine Arts at Boston. He joined Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1970. Currently he is connected to the research activities at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, Los Angeles and is a visiting curator of Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. His famous books include, Dancing to the flute: Music and Dance in Indian Art, Light of Asia.