Devika Singh

Devika Singh is an art historian, art critic and curator who specialises in modern and contemporary art in their global contexts, with a particular emphasis on art in South Asia and the transnational history of 20^th-century art. As a critic and curator, Singh has also worked with a number of international contemporary artists. At the Courtauld she is the co-lead of the new Master’s Programme in curating.

Before joining the Courtauld in 2022 she was Curator, International Art at Tate Modern. At Tate she was part of the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational, leading and convening a number of research events that advanced new perspectives on global art histories. Singh was also the curator in charge of museum displays and acquisitions of South Asian art for the Tate collection. She was previously Smuts Research Fellow at the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge and a fellow at the Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art (Max Weber Foundation) in Paris. She has also been a member of the ‘Observatoire: Globalisation, Art et Prospective’ at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (INHA, Paris).

Devika Singh completed an hypo-khâgne and a khâgne at Lycée Condorcet in Paris and holds a BA (first class honours) in the history of art from the University of Cambridge (King’s College) and an MA (with distinction) from the Courtauld Institute of Art, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB). She worked at Marian Goodman Gallery in Paris before pursuing her PhD in the history of art (Cambridge, 2013) supported by the AHRC and a Knox studentship from Trinity College. Her thesis dealt with the reception and representation of Mughal art and architectural history in twentieth-century India and led to articles in Art History, Modern Asian Studies and the Journal of Art Historiography. She has held an AHRC fellowship at the Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington DC, a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) fellowship at the Freie Universität, Berlin, an André Chastel fellowship of the INHA at the French Academy at Rome (Villa Medici) and was a resident of the Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo (OCA)’s International Studio Programme.

She has curated internationally in a diversity of contexts. She co-curated ‘Gedney in India’ (Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, CSMVS, Mumbai, 2017; Duke University, 2018) and curated exhibitions including ‘Planetary Planning’ (Dhaka Art Summit, 2018), the India pavilion at Dubai Photo (Dubai Design District, 2016); ‘Homelands: Art from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan’ (Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 2019-20) as well as a number of displays at Tate Modern including Lee Mingwei’s Our Labyrinth (Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, 2022). She was also a curator of the Voices sector at the last edition of Paris Photo (2025).

Her writing has appeared widely in English and in French in exhibition catalogues of international museums and institutions (including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Barbican, the Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo and the Centre Pompidou), in art magazines such as frieze, Art Press and MARG and in the journals Third Text, Modern Asian Studies, the Journal of Art Historiography and Art History. Her book International Departures: Art in India after Independence, for which she received a research grant from the British Academy and a publication grant from the Paul Mellon Centre, was published in December 2023 with Reaktion Books.

She is a member of several professional bodies, including CIMAM, is a founding advisory board member of Art South Asia Project (ASAP), regularly nominates and juries for art prizes, recently jurying for the Rencontres d’Arles, the Cavendish Arts Science fellowship and Studio Voltaire, and she is a joint editor of the Oxford Art Journal.

Joint Editor, Oxford Art Journal

Founding Advisory Board member, Art South Asia Project (ASAP)

Current Teaching at the Courtauld:

MA Curating Programme co-lead (major administrative role)

History and Theory of Curating – MA core module (convenor and lecturer)

Working with Collections – MA elective module (convenor and lecturer)

Group Exhibition Project 1 and 2 – MA core modules (co-convenor and lecturer)

Critical Debates: Migrations – MA core module (lecturer)

Exhibiting Art – BA2 core module (convenor 2024 and 2025; lecturer)

Another Story: A Transnational History of Postwar Exhibitions – BA3 elective module (2023, 2024 and 2025 convenor and lecturer)