Naman Ahuja

Naman P. Ahuja
Naman Ahuja in 2014
Born	1974
Residence	New Delhi
Nationality	Indian
Alma mater	School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Occupation	Indian Art Historian
Known for	Ancient history, curating The Body in Indian Art and Thought exhibition
Notable work	Jawaharlal Nehru University
Website	www.indianiconography.info

Naman P. Ahuja (born 1974) is an art historian and curator based in New Delhi. He is Professor of Indian Art and Architecture at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi where his research and graduate teaching focus on Indian iconography and sculpture, temple architecture and Sultanate-period painting. He is also the Editor of Marg, India’s leading quarterly magazine and journal on the arts, published from Mumbai. His studies on privately owned objects—terracottas, ivories and small finds—have drawn attention to a wide range of ritual cultures and transcultural exchanges at an everyday, quotidian level. He has curated several exhibitions, most notably The Body in Indian Art and Thought, and published books, including The Making of the Modern Indian Artist Craftsman: Devi Prasad. He is an academic who creates a work of art as he teaches it.

Professor Ahuja received his Ph.D. in Art and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, at the University of London in 2001. His thesis was titled ‘Early Indian Moulded Terracotta: The Emergence of an Iconography and Variations in Style, Second Century BC to First Century AD’. A specific research contribution was his work on votive figurines and other imagery from the post-Mauryan period which brought to light a pantheon of Indian gods and goddesses that were irrevocably transformed after AD 200.

Professor Ahuja has been tutor of the SOAS/Christie’s Asian Arts Course, the SOAS M.A. course in Religious, Fine and Decorative Arts of South Asia, and the British Museum’s Diploma in Asian Art. He has held Visiting Professorships and Fellowships at the University of Zurich, the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the University of Alberta in Edmonton and Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. Currently he teaches at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research and graduate teaching covers a diverse range of subjects including periods of artistic/visual exchange in pre-modern societies like ancient Gandhara, ancient temple statuary and iconography and the manuscripts painted in the Sultanate period in India.