Nima Poovaya-Smith


Dr Nima Poovaya-Smith OBE is a museum curator, art historian and writer. She is known for her work on transcultural and post-colonial South Asian museum collections in Bradford.
Poovaya-Smith came to Britain in 1981. She was appointed curator at the Cartwright Hall civic art gallery in Bradford in 1986 "with the remit of building up, and displaying, a collection of art from the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent". At that time she was one of very few Black and Minority Ethnic people working in museums in the UK. She has said that "if these works are not captured in public collections then there’s going to be a huge distortion of history".
Poovaya-Smith developed the Transcultural Galleries at Cartwright Hall, which in 2008 became the Connect galleries. She held the post at Cartwright Hall until 1998, and developed "one of the most significant collections of contemporary art in the UK by artists from south Asian, African and Caribbean heritages".
In 2020 a textile exhibition at Two Temple Place included work collected by Poovaya-Smith.
Poovaya-Smith has been head of special projects at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford.
She runs an arts company, Alchemy Anew. She has also written poetry for performance.
Poovaya-Smith was awarded an OBE in 2016 for services to Arts and Museums in Yorkshire.

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