[INDOLOGY] Professor Kavita Singh, 1964-2023

[Ananya Vajpeyi]

Dear Colleagues in Indology,

Yesterday we lost a friend and fellow scholar, art historian Professor
Kavita Singh, to cancer. She was 58, and in the process of moving from the
Jawaharlal Nehru University to Ashoka University when she was diagnosed
last year.

She was renowned for her work on Mughal, Rajput, Pahari and Deccani
painting, as well as on museum studies.

She was an Infosys laureate (2018), an elected member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences (2020), appointed to the Board of Trustees of
the Getty Institutions (2020-24), and had been appointed the Slade
Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge University this year (2022-2023), an
assignment she was unable to take up on account of her illness. (She did
deliver the Slade Lecture in Fine Art online in April 2023).

Kavita had just completed her curation of a forthcoming show about a rare
illuminated Ramcaritmanas from the royal court in 19th c Kashi. The
exhibition, co-curated with Dr. Singh's former student Parul Singh, is
scheduled to go up in September 2023 at the new Museum of Art and
Photography in Bangalore. She delivered an extensive illustrated lecture in
person as a curtain-raiser for this show at the India Habitat Center in New
Delhi on July 15, 2023 (a fortnight before her passing).

I know that many of you knew her personally and were interested in and
inspired by her work. Here is an extensive tribute by her colleague Shukla
Sawant from the School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU:

https://thewire.in/the-arts/kavita-singhs-inspiring-research-and-memories-of-her-unwavering-kindness-will-live-on

Her untimely death is shattering for her family and friends, but also an
irreparable loss for the field of art history and art historical pedagogy
in India, and for academic life, especially at beleaguered Indian public
institutions, at this time.

Sincerely,

Ananya Vajpeyi.

-- 

*Ananya Vajpeyi, Ph.D.*
*Fellow, **Centre for the Study of Developing Societies*
*29 Rajpur Rd., Civil Lines*
*New Delhi 110054, INDIA*
*EMAIL: vajpeyi at csds.in <vajpeyi at csds.in>*
*CSDS BIO: http://www.csds.in/faculty_ananya_vajpeyi.htm
<http://www.csds.in/faculty_ananya_vajpeyi.htm>*
*RESEARCH PROJECT: https://www.nilgiri.ugent.be/team/
<https://www.nilgiri.ugent.be/team/>*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.indology.info/pipermail/indology/attachments/20230731/b058d794/attachment.htm>