The Peabody Essex Museum has appointed a new curator of Indian and South Asian Art. Siddhartha V. Shah, 39, holds degrees from Johns Hopkins, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and Columbia. The museum’s collection of Indian art from the period of the Raj to the present is one of the most important outside of India. The core of PEM’s holdings is the Herwitz Collection of approximately 1,600 works by 70 artists of post-1947 painting.
“The Herwitz Collection, in particular,” Shah said in a press statement, “allows us to present the art of South Asia and its diverse cultures as connected to the past while looking firmly to the future.”
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Shah’s interests extend to Jungian psychoanalysis, Tantric cults of the Divine Feminine, and yoga (he’s an instructor).