Betwixt and Beyond: Toward a New Indian Art and Identity

Please enjoy the opening weekend lecture for Visions from India: 21st-Century Art from the Pizzuti Collection. Dr. Siddhartha V. Shah of the Peabody Essex Museum discusses the ever-evolving story of India; one quite distinct from the fantasy of a timeless, unchanging India that so many have. By discussing his own research and writing as well as topics within Visions from India, Shah reveals the challenges that Indian artists and creatives face in being from a country both ancient and new and how they find great opportunity to reinvent and unravel centuries of ignorance and prejudice about India and Indian-ness. Introduction by CMA curator Dr. Catherine Walworth. Live Q&A with Shah and Walworth to follow. Free on Facebook Live.

Shah is the Peabody Essex Museum’s curator of Indian and South Asian art and its recently appointed director of education and civic engagement. He earned his B.A. in art history from Johns Hopkins University, an M.A. in East-West psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University. His academic and curatorial projects have been featured in publications ranging from India Today and The Times of India to Psychology Today and The New Yorker. Shah also serves on the Advisory Council of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect and on the Board of the American Council for Southern Asian Art.

Photo by Ellen Page Wilson