Vishakha N. Desai Biography

Dr. Vishakha Desai teaches in the School of International and Public Affairs as an Adjunct Professor. She is also the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation's Senior Advisor for Global Programs. From 2004 until 2012, Dr. Desai was President and CEO of the Asia Society, a global organization committed to building ties between Asian and American peoples. As President, she oversaw the Society's broad programming, which ranged from policy initiatives and national educational programs to ground-breaking exhibitions and performing arts programs across its network of eleven locations in the United States and Asia. Under her leadership, the society expanded the scope and scale of its activities by opening new offices in India and Korea, establishing a new center for US-China relations, launching various leadership initiatives, and launching two new architecturally significant facilities in Hong Kong and Houston. From 1990 until 2004, Dr. Desai served different prominent posts at the Asia Society before becoming President. Dr. Desai was a Curator and the Head of Public Programs and Academic Affairs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston before joining the Asia Society in 1990. She has held tenured positions at Columbia University, Boston University, and the University of Massachusetts. Dr. Desai, an Asian art scholar and public intellectual, is a regular speaker at international conferences on the cultural foundations of Asia's economic and political transition and difficulties. She has written opinion pieces on Asian political, cultural, and women's development that have published in over fifty media worldwide. Dr. Desai is widely known for her leadership in bringing contemporary Asian artworks and ideas to western audiences, having written significant exhibition catalogues and edited a major scholarly publication on Asian Art History for the Twenty-First Century. Dr. Desai received his B.A. in Political Science from Bombay University, as well as his M.A. and Ph.D. in Asian Art History from the University of Michigan. Dr. Desai has received four honorary degrees from American universities after receiving various international and national awards and fellowships. She has earned accolades for her work on Asian American problems from the University of Massachusetts, City University of New York, Asian Americans for Equality, and Leadership Education for Asian Pacific Americans (LEAP). She has been honored by Art Table, a national group of women leaders in the arts, and has won a Gold Medal from the National Institute of Social Sciences for her contributions to the arts. Dr. Desai was named one of the 100 most prominent women leaders in New York by Crains New York, one of the 50 most distinguished Indian Americans by India Abroad, the largest national weekly for Indian Americans, and the outstanding International Woman of the Year by Zee T.V. (India). President Barack Obama selected Dr. Desais to the National Museums and Library Services Board in 2012 in appreciation of her work in the museum profession. She is now the only female independent director on the Corporate Board of Mahindra and Mahindra, one of India's five largest global corporations. She has served on the boards of various non-profit organizations both domestically and internationally. Bertelsman Foundation, AFS Intercultural Programs, Auroville Foundation of India, and the House of World Cultures, Berlin are among them. She is also the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center and a Brookings Institution Advisory Trustee. She was President of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) from 1998 to 1999 and a member of the board of directors from 1995 to 2000. She has previously served on the boards of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the College Art Association, ArtTable, and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Dr. Desai is married to China researcher Robert B. Oxnam, who served as Asia Society President from 1981 to 1992.

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