Vidya J. Dehejia

Vidya Dehejia is Barbara Stoler Miller Professor Emerita of Indian Art at Columbia University in New York, and author of a range of books that connect the archaeological, visual, and literary arts of India. Her writings have ranged from Buddhist art of the centuries BCE to the esoteric temples of North India, and from the sacred bronzes of South India to art under the British Raj. Between 1994 and 2002, she served as Chief Curator, Deputy Director, and Acting Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer & Sackler Galleries in Washington, DC. In 2016, she was invited to present the 65^th A.W. Mellon Lecture in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, the first time that India had been featured in the 65 years of Mellon lectures. That study was published in 2021 by Princeton University Press as The Thief Who Stole my Heart: The Material Life of Sacred Bronzes from Chola India, 855–1280.

Dr. Dehejia received a BA in Ancient Indian Culture from Bombay University, followed by a BA in Archaeology from Newnham College, Cambridge University, UK, culminating in a PhD from Cambridge University, UK for her dissertation on “Early Buddhist Caves in Western India.” She held positions in the History Department of the University of Sydney, Australia, the University of Hong Kong, and the Delhi School of Planning & Architecture, before joining Columbia University in 1982.

Among the 27 books she has published are India: A Story through 100 Objects (2021); The Unfinished. Indian Stone Carvers at Work (2016); The Body Adorned (2012); The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India, (2002); India through the Lens: Photography 1840–1911 (2000); Devi, The Great Goddess: Female Divinity in South Asian Art, (1999); and Discourse in Early Buddhist Art (1997). Her Indian Art (first edition, 1997) in the Phaidon Press ‘Art and Ideas” series remains the standard text for undergraduates in American universities. She regularly publishes articles in a range of journals.

Dr. Dehejia’s curatorial activities include six notable exhibitions, accompanied by significant catalogues, of which three, whose catalogues are mentioned above, were completed during her tenure at the Freer & Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian.  Additionally, for the Morgan Library, she co-curated From Merchants to Emperors: British Artists and India (1986), while for Columbia’s Wallach Gallery she organized two exhibitions, Impossible Picturesqueness: Edward Lear’s Indian Watercolors, 1873–1875 (1989), and Delight in Design: Indian Silver for the Raj (2008).

In 2012, the President of India awarded her a Padma Bhushan, India’s second highest Republic Day award, for “Outstanding Contribution to Art & Education.” The award of the Freer Medal recognized her scholarship and career accomplishments in 2023.

As of 2025, Dr. Dehejia is working on two major projects. The first is an exhibition and accompanying catalogue with the working title “In the Realms of Friendship,” for a major private museum in India. The second is a book-length study of the south Indian site of Mamallapuram (c. 600–730) which, she says remains “A Riddle in Stone,” her title for her chapter on the site in her 1997 book Indian Art.  

Vidya Dehejia divides her time between Manhattan and Goa, India.

Updated April 9, 2025