Framing untold stories

As we continue to celebrate the AGO Photography Department’s 20-year anniversary, AGO curator of photography, Sophie Hackett, joined the Royal Ontario Museum’s Dan Mishra Curator of South Asian Art & Culture, Deepali Dewan, for a conversation about photography at the ROM. While the AGO celebrates 20 years of its Photography Department, the ROM marks a similar milestone with their department of South Asian Art & Culture. 

Deepali Dewan joined the ROM in 2002 after the efforts of members from the GTA’s South Asian community created a permanent presence for South Asian art and culture at the ROM through a dedicated gallery, curatorial position, and acquisitions. Today, Dewan’s main research interest focuses on the history of photography in India and the South Asian diaspora with a view toward understanding how photography has shaped contemporary ways of viewing and being in the world.

In the latest Shape of the Museum conversation, Dewan discussed a range of topics, including the first photographs she found after she started at the ROM that had been acquired to contextualize artifacts in the early years of the museum; a few favourite acquisitions, such as Indian painted photographs and how her understanding of them changed through collection-based research; and her participation in The Family Camera, a project to collect family photographs and their related narratives. Dewan has made it her mission to care for and study photographs, alongside her broader work in the department, and to advocate for untold stories in South Asian Art. To learn more, watch the video below.

Want more? This conversation series invites professionals from around the world who are thinking about art and audiences and learning in different ways. Stay tuned for our next conversation in the series and other events at AGO.ca/events.

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