Natalia Di Pietrantonio has devoted her career to South Asian art but her family comes from very different parts of the world — her father is from Italy and her mother from Mexico.

Attracted by art from an early age, Di Pietrantonio majored in art history at the University of California Davis. During her studies, she had to take a survey course on Asian art and found she loved it. “It was completely unexpected,” she said. “I had not been exposed to South Asian art before then, but starting with that one class it became my career.”