Annapurna Garimella is an art historian and a designer. Her research focuses on late medieval Indic architecture and the history and practices of vernacular visual and built cultures in India after Independence. Garimella is the Managing Trustee of Art, Resources and Teaching Trust, which has a research library and conducts independent research and teaching. She also heads Jackfruit Research and Design, an organization with a specialized portfolio of design, research, and curation. Jackfruit’s recent curatorial projects include Mutable: Ceramic and Clay Art in India Since 1947 (Piramal Museum of Art, 2017) and The Past has a Home in the Future: Dhoomimal Gallery and Connaught Place (New Delhi, 2024). She has also designed and managed the construction MV Ganga Vilas, inaugurated in 2022, which sails the world’s longest river cruise. Most recently, Garimella has developed and taught the online course “A History of Indian Craft: 1850s to the Present” for MAP Academy which provided a world history for Indian craft to more than 3,000 registered participants.
Her newest books are the co-edited Marg volume titled The Contemporary Hindu Temple: Fragments for a History (2019) and The Long Arc of South Asian Art: A Reader in Honor of Vidya Dehejia (Women Unlimited, 2022). Designing India: 1947 to the Present, an edited volume, A Face on a Face: South Asian Masks in the Vaidya Collection and Digesting the Past: The Discourse of Sacralized Architectural Renovation in Southern India (14th-17th Centuries) are book manuscripts under preparation.
