Nima Poovaya-Smith

Dr Ammanichanda 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.

Early life and education

Poovaya-Smith was born in Coorg in Karnataka and was educated in Belgaum. Her father worked in the silk industry and her mother was artistic. Her original research interest was Margaret Atwood. At that time she was one of very few Black and Minority Ethnic people working in museums in the UK. 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".

Poovaya-Smith developed the Transcultural Galleries at Cartwright Hall, which in 2008 became the Connect galleries. Her aim was to attract South Asian people to the galleries. She described the Transcultural Galleries as "the first non-colonial exhibition of its kind in the country". The displays were noted for their difference from traditional museum formats: "thematic, non-hierarchical, non-linear".

In 1998 Poovaya-Smith became Director of the Arts Council Yorkshire.

She runs an arts company, Alchemy Anew. She has also written poetry for performance.

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

Poovaya-Smith was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to Arts and Museums in Yorkshire.

In 2020 she became one of the Deputy lieutenants of West Yorkshire.

Personal life

Poovaya-Smith is married to Paul Smith, a sociologist.

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) "Confessions of an Indolent Curator", Kunapipi, 19(3), 1997 "Making Culturally Diverse Histories", with Nick Merriman, in Making Histories in Museums, ed. Gaynor Kavanagh (2005) The Wild Cats Compendium (2022)