John Guy, whose work I have featured on this site before, is a specialist on Indian, and particularly Buddhist art, who is now working as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
After being delayed owing the Covid pandemic, he eventually managed to put together a major exhibition of early Buddhist art called Tree and Serpent, and this lecture at the Met was given as part of the exhibition.
The talk focuses on the development of Buddhism in the Deccan in the first centuries after the Buddha, and remarkable amount of remains there is in southern India, where dozens of major monasteries were situated.
Guy shows a large number of these remains, mainly from Stūpas and the monasteries surrounding them, and discusses how Buddhist ceremonies have now been incorporated in Indian festivals.
If you appreciate his talk, there is a very well-produced video introducing the Tree and Serpent exhibition along with high-definition photographs of the exhibits by Leow Chai Yee on my Photo Dharma website.
Note that the video is poorly edited: nothing happens for 5m, and the talk itself starts at 9m 45s which is where it is set to start
if the video does not appear on the page, try reloading the page; and if that doesn’t work, leave a comment so I can update the page (the comment is not published)
to see an album of screenshots click here