Ms Divia Patel was awarded an India Travel Award (1993-94) when Curatorial Assistant in the Indian and South-East Asian Department, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, for fieldwork relating to her study of Indian contemporary art.
Ms Patel is now Senior Curator in the Asian Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She specializes in contemporary art and design, popular culture and photography from South Asia. Her recent research has been on contemporary design from India, which resulted in the publication of her book India Contemporary Design: Fashion, Graphics, Interiors in 2014. She was co-curator of the V&A’s major exhibition The Fabric of India (2015–2016) with responsibility for the modern and contemporary content. She is one of three authors of The Fabric of India book (with Rosemary Crill and Stephen Cohen, 2015). Her focus on contemporary South Asia has led to significant acquisition of work by contemporary artists and designers for the V&A’s permanent collections. In her early career she curated the exhibition Cinema India: The Art of Bollywood (2002–2007) which toured nationally and internationally and won a BBC award for achievement in the arts. She has curated The Photographers’ Pilgrimage: Exploring Buddhist Sites (V&A, 2009), co-curated Indian Life and Landscape (2009–2010) which toured extensively in India, and curated M. F. Husain: Master of Modern Indian Painting (V&A, 2014). She has published on all of these subject areas. She is a trustee of the Nehru Trust for the Indian Collection at the V&A Museum.