Deepali Dewan

Bio

B.A. (Honours), Art History, McGill University, 1993
M.A., Art History, University of Minnesota, 1995
Ph.D., Art History, University of Minnesota, 2001

Dr. Deepali Dewan is an art historian with a special interest in the visual cultures of South Asia. She is a Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, teaches in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto and is affiliated with the Centre for South Asian Studies. She is also part of the Toronto Photography Seminar, a group of scholars from Ontario institutions who read, produce, and edit collaborative research concerning the history and theory of photography.

Dr. Dewan’s research interests encompass nineteenth and twentieth-century visual culture of South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora. Her work on colonial South Asia has examined the links between early art education, the circulation of objects, and the production of knowledge in the discipline of art history. Her research on 20th-century art has focused on the work of specific artists as a way to begin to map the larger picture of post-colonial visual practice. Most recently, her research focuses on different aspects of the history and theory of photography in India as a way to explore how the photographic image played a productive role in the trajectories of colonialism, nationalism, and modernity, with a view toward understanding how photography has shaped contemporary ways of viewing and being in the world.

Dr. Dewan joined the Royal Ontario Museum in January 2002 as Associate Curator of South Asian Civilizations. Prior to joining the ROM, she worked at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and The Asia Society in New York. She also served as visiting instructor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and at Carleton College, Minnesota, where she taught courses on the history of South Asian and contemporary arts. She has received fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the College Art Association, the MacArthur Program/Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.