Alpesh Kantilal Patel’s (he/they) art historical scholarship, art criticism, curatorial projects, and teaching reflect his transcultural, queer, and anti-racist approach to global contemporary art and craft practices.
He is interested in thinking about art’s histories through relational understandings of identity, the focus of his four major publications, the monographs Productive failure: writing queer transnational South Asian art histories (2018) and Multiple and one: writing queer global art histories (forthcoming), as well as the edited anthologies Storytellers of Arts Histories (2022) and Creole Archive: Jacek. K. Kolasiński (forthcoming). He is beginning research on a new book project that will explore productive overlaps among glass as a material and concept, queer and trans theories, and decolonial thinking.
He is editor of five exhibition catalogues, published in conjunction with the eponymous exhibitions he organized for Miami Beach Urban Studios (MBUS)-Florida International University (FIU), mounir fatmi: Modern Times (2015), Concrete Feet: Tom Scicluna (2015), This Too Shall Pass: New Work by Saravanan Parasuraman (2014), Cause Way: Paul Donald (2013), and Transformation (2011).
From 2011 to 2021, he was based at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida.
In addition to his academic experience, he has been affiliated with several New York City-based organizations, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, where he worked in the curatorial and director’s offices in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as more recently UrbanGlass (curator-at-large, 2023).
He is associate editor of visual arts, architecture, and art history for the Association of the Arts of the Present/Journal and on the Getty Research Journal’s editorial advisory board. Previously, he was Chair of the Editorial Board of Art Journal and Art Journal Open, as well as editor of contemporary art book reviews for caa.reviews.
Education
- PhD, Art History and Visual Studies, University of Manchester, England, 2009
- BA, History of Art, Yale University, 1997
Selected Work
Patel, A. & Davidson, J.C. (2024b) “TRANS-ASIA” dossier. Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP)/Journal. 9:3 (September 2024): 393-436.
https://doi.org/10.1353/asa.2024.a957246
Patel A. (2024a) “Forever Becoming: Teaching ‘Transgender Studies Meets Art History’ and Theorizing Trans Joy.” Arts. 13(4):115.
https://doi.org/10.3390/arts13040115
Patel, A (2023-24). Three exhibitions, organized under the theme “Forever Becoming: Decolonization, Materiality, and Trans*Subjectivity.” UrbanGlass, New York City.
https://www.alpeshkpatel.com/curatorial-practice
Patel, A. (2023b) "Post/Anti/Neo/De-Colonial Theory and Visual Analysis." Pp. 311-326 in Amelia Jones and Jane Chin Davidson (eds.). A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119841814.ch24
Patel, A. (2023a) "Reflecting on Whiteness in Recent Contemporary Artwork Exploring Transnational Poland," Pp. 363-373 in Tatiana Flores, Florencia San Martin and Charlene Villaseñor Black (eds.). The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003152262-32
Patel, A. & Siddiqui, Y., eds. (2022). Storytellers of Art Histories: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life. Bristol: Intellect Books.
https://www.intellectbooks.com/storytellers-of-art-histories
Patel, A., Davidson, J.C. & Okeke-Agulu, C., eds. (2021). “Curatorial Impacts – the Futures of Okwui Enwezor (1963–2019).” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 48(1).
https://www.dukeupress.edu/okwui-enwezor
Patel, A. (2017). Productive failure: Writing queer transnational South Asian art histories. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784992545/
Selected Awards
Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, England, Research Grant (2025)
Danish Arts Foundation, Denmark, Curatorial Research Grant (2025)
Headlands Center for the Arts, US, Artist in Residence (2024)
Fulbright US Scholar Program, Fulbright Scholar Award, Poland (2015-16)
Cranbrook Academy of Art, US, Critical Global Studies Fellowship (2016)