Nima Poovaya-Smith

Dr Nima Poovaya-Smith OBE is a museum curator, art historian and writer. She is known for her work on transcultural and post-colonial South Asian museum collections in Bradford.

Nima Poovaya-Smith
Born1953 (age 66–67)[1]
NationalityBritish and Indian
OccupationCurator, art historian, writer

Poovaya-Smith came to Britain in 1981.[2] She was appointed curator at the Cartwright Hall civic art gallery in Bradford in 1986 "with the remit of building up, and displaying, a collection of art from the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent".[3][4][5][6] At that time she was one of very few Black and Minority Ethnic people working in museums in the UK.[7] She has said that "if these works [by Black and Asian artists] are not captured in public collections then there’s going to be a huge distortion of history".[6][8]

Poovaya-Smith developed the Transcultural Galleries at Cartwright Hall, which in 2008 became the Connect galleries.[9] She held the post at Cartwright Hall until 1998, and developed "one of the most significant collections of contemporary art in the UK by artists from south Asian, African and Caribbean heritages".[1]

In 2020 a textile exhibition at Two Temple Place included work collected by Poovaya-Smith.[1][10]

Poovaya-Smith has been head of special projects at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford.[11]

She runs an arts company, Alchemy Anew.[12] She has also written poetry for performance.[13]

Poovaya-Smith was awarded an OBE in 2016 for services to Arts and Museums in Yorkshire.[14]

Publications
  • "Exhibitions and audiences: catering for a pluralistic public", in Museum Languages, Objects and Texts, ed. Gaynor Kavanagh (1991).
  • Warm and Rich and Fearless: A Brief Survey of the Sikh Culture: a Catalogue Produced to Accompany the Exhibition Warm and Rich and Fearless, an Exhibition of Sikh Art, Cartwright Hall (9 March - 2 June 1991), with Khushwant Singh and Kaveri Ponnapa (1991).
  • "Making Culturally Diverse Histories", with Nick Merriman, in Making Histories in Museums, ed. Gaynor Kavanagh (2005)

References
  1. Spence, Rachel (27 February 2020). "A London exhibition takes the history of textiles out of the shadows". The Financial Times. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  2. Poovaya-Smith, Nima (1995). "An intelligent inquiry: Nima Poovaya-Smith reports on her journey to Pakistan and its contemporary art". Women's Art Magazine (63). Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  3. Sharon J Macdonald; Bettina Messias Carbonell (23 April 2012). "Museums, National, Postnational, Transcultural Identities". Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 273–283. ISBN 978-1-4051-7381-0. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  4. Sharon Macdonald (18 July 2013). Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today. Routledge. pp. 175–. ISBN 978-1-135-62872-7. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  5. Poovaya-Smith, Nima (1997). "Confessions of an Indolent Curator". Kunapipi. 19 (3). Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  6. Ramaswamy, Chitra (30 July 2018). "Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? Britain's Hidden Art History review – a powerful picture of whitewashing". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  7. Figueiredo, Deirdre (17 April 2014). "My Gurus". Arts Professional. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  8. "Speech Acts// A Hidden Art History". MAGnet. Manchester Art Gallery. 26 November 2018. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  9. Perla Innocenti (22 April 2016). Migrating Heritage: Experiences of Cultural Networks and Cultural Dialogue in Europe. Taylor & Francis. pp. 82–. ISBN 978-1-317-09648-1. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  10. Judah, Hettie (31 Jan 2020). "A tangled, teasing show: Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  11. Minwalla, Shabnam (5 May 2002). "'Culture can be used as a driver for economic change'". The Times of India. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  12. "Sharing the art of Islam". The Telegraph and Argus. 20 December 2005. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  13. Hutchinson, Charles (20 March 2014). "Love Beyond Measure: The Legend Of Sohni And Mahiwal, National Centre for Early Music, York, March 20". The York Press. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  14. "Order of the British Empire". The Gazette. 11 June 2016. Retrieved 29 June 2020.


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