Tapati Guha-Thakurta

Tapati Guha-Thakurta (born 27 September 1957) is an Indian historian who has written about the cultural history and art of India. She is a director and professor in history at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and was previously a professor at Presidency College, Kolkata. Her extensive research work on Kolkata's Durga Puja led to its inclusion in UNESCOs Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

Tapati Guha-Thakurta
Born	(1957-09-27) 27 September 1957 (age 67) Calcutta, India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation(s)	Cultural historian, academic
Known for	Art history, visual studies, cultural history of India
Spouse	Hari Vasudevan (d. 2020)
Relatives	Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (brother)[1]
Academic background
Education	Presidency College, Kolkata University of Oxford
Academic work
Notable works	Monuments, Objects, Histories: Art in Colonial and Post–Colonial India Making of a New 'Indian' Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal

Biography

Guha-Thakurta was born in Calcutta and obtained a bachelor's and a master's degree in history from the Presidency College and Calcutta University. She finished her DPhil. at the University of Oxford.^[2] Guha-Thakurta was married to historian Hari Vasudevan, who died in May 2020 after contracting the Covid-19 virus.^[3]

Career

In 1995, she was awarded the Charles Wallace Visiting Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge.^[4] In 2011, she was a visiting fellow at the Yale Center for British Art.^[5] In 2018, she was a visiting professor at Brown University.^[6] She has written exhibition monographs and curated many art exhibitions.^[7] In 2019, she was assigned by the Indian Ministry of Culture to prepare a dossier proposing the inclusion of Durga Puja in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.^[8]

Books

• Guha-Thakurta, Tapati (2007). The Making of a New 'Indian' Art: Artists, Aesthetics and Nationalism in Bengal, c.1850–1920. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521052733.
• Guha-Thakurta, Tapati (2004). Monuments, Objects, Histories: Art in Colonial and Post–Colonial India. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231129985.
• Guha-Thakurta, Tapati (2015). In the Name of the Goddess: The Durga Pujas of Contemporary Kolkata. Primus Books. ISBN 978-9384082468.