Temple University

Alpesh Kantilal Patel’s art historical scholarship, curation, and criticism reflect his queer, anti-racist and transnational approach to contemporary art. His monograph, Productive Failure: Writing Queer Transnational South Asian Art Histories [Manchester University Press], mobilizes “affirmative criticality” and “productive failure” as conceptual frameworks to produce a more ethical, entangled, and transparent practice of writing (art) history. He has published articles in journals like e-misférica, GLQ: Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, and Journal of Asian diasporic visual cultures and the Americas, among others. He is currently the Chair of the Editorial Board of Art Journal/Art Journal Open and Associate Editor, Visual Arts, Architecture, and Art History of Association of the Arts of the Present/Journal (ASAP/J). 

Patel’s research has received support from the Arts Council England and the National Endowment of Humanities, among others. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Poznań, Poland, an Institute of Advanced Studies Fellow at Loughborough University, England, and a Critical Studies and Humanities Fellow at Cranbrook Academy of Art. A visiting scholar at New York University’s Center for Gender and Sexuality and Asian/Pacific/American Institute, he worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art and New Museum of Contemporary Art (all NYC) and has organized exhibitions and lecture series in the United States and internationally. He is the 2023 curator-at-large at UrbanGlass, New York City, where he is organizing several exhibitions under the theme: "Forever Becoming: Decolonization, Materiality, and Trans*Subjectivity." His next book project, Multiple and One: Writing Queer Global Art Histories is under contract with Manchester University Press. 

PhD, Art History and Visual Studies, University of Manchester, England, 2009 

BA, History of Art, Yale University, 1997 

Selected Work 

Patel, A. (2023d) "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.

Patel, A. (2023c) "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.

Patel, A. (2023b) "Queer and Trans/Joy Worlding" and "Disorderly Encounters and Irregular Connections: Towards Cruising." For the exhibition "Self", Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh, PA.

Patel, A. (2023a) “Didier William at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami.” Artforum 61(8), 171. https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/202304/didier-william-90289  

Patel, A. & Siddiqui, Y., eds. (2022b). Storytellers of Art Histories: Living and Sustaining a Creative Life. Bristol: Intellect Books. https://www.intellectbooks.com/storytellers-of-art-histories 

Patel, A. (2022a). “Visual Diaries: Towards Art History as Storytelling." Art History Pedagogy & Practice 7(1). https://academicworks.cuny.edu/ahpp/vol7/iss1/2/ 

Patel, A. (2021c). “Transregional Entanglement: Sexual Artistic Geographies,” Tate Modern, England, Consent not to be a single being: Worlding the Caribbean conference, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c2Cvbwll8U 

Patel, A. (2021b). “Queer Chinese feminist Archipelago: Shanghai, San Francisco, and Miami,” philoSOPHIA: A Journal of transContinental Feminism 11(1), 194-212. https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/47242 

Patel, A., Davidson, J.C. & Okeke-Agulu, C., eds. (2021a). “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/