Kiran Nadar has transformed a personal passion for collecting into one of India’s most influential private art museums, championing modern and contemporary Indian art at home and abroad. From Venice Biennale projects to a vast new Delhi museum, she is building inclusive, multidisciplinary spaces while using philanthropy and education to ensure Indian art is globally visible yet locally accessible.
Kiran Nadar would like to be remembered for definitively helping place Indian art on the global map. A laurel that is certain for the founder and chairperson of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), given the trajectory of homegrown art under her aegis.
Over the past few months, she’s been busy overseeing The Meeting Ground: Scenes from the KNMA Collection, a major exhibition that will be showcased at Christie’s, London, this July and August. “They have given us 45,000 square feet of space. It is an important opportunity to showcase Indian art internationally,” says Nadar, adding, “At the Venice Biennale, too, there were at least eight Indian artists represented, which was remarkable.”
Then there’s the collaboration with Indian American filmmaker Mira Nair for Amri, an upcoming biographical drama based on the life of painter Amrita Sher-Gil, considered by many to be a pioneer of modern Indian art that is slated for a 2027 release. Nadar shares that she was recently on location in Amritsar, Punjab, with Nair and Nair’s daughter-in law, artist Rama Duwaji.
In Delhi, the KNMA continues to work towards deepening public engagement with Indian art. Case in point is the ongoing retrospective Tyeb Mehta: Bearing Weight (with the lightness of being) that celebrates the work of one of India’s foremost modernists. The exhibition on till July 26, 2026, is presented in collaboration with the Tyeb Mehta Foundation and Saffronart Foundation.
Meanwhile, there is growing excitement around the new standalone museum that is scheduled to open in the next few years. The ambitious project, near the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, will be spread over 1 million square feet. Designed by Adjaye Associates, KNMA’s new space is set to become one of the largest cultural centres in South Asia, featuring state-of-the-art auditoriums, visual arts galleries, a library, restaurants, and performance spaces. “The new museum is about art and culture in a broader sense. Theatre, music, dance, cinema: all these forms are interconnected, with one feeding into the other,” elaborates Nadar.
In 2023, Nadar was conferred France’s highest civilian award, the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, in recognition of her contribution to the field of art. The following year, she was honoured with the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award, for her service to the arts. In 2025, she was awarded the CSP (Comprehensive Strategic Partnership) Hero’s Award by the Australian High Commissioner to India for strengthening India-Australia cultural ties.
In March of this year, she was honoured with the Global Arts Patronage Award by Hamburger Bahnhof, the National Gallery for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Germany, becoming the first-ever recipient of the award. It might come as a surprise then that Nadar has had no formal training in the subject. Her journey as a collector began with the building of her home and was shaped by a lifelong interest in the arts. “I began collecting from a deeply personal place, drawn to works that moved me, that I wanted to live alongside,” she recalls.
Her first acquisition was Rameshwar Broota’s Runners, a bold and graphic depiction of a male nude that caused “quite a stir”, particularly because she intended to display it in her home. “That was the initial idea,” says Nadar.
“But living with art led to a deeper engagement with it. I became increasingly interested in the artists, their practices, and the ideas that informed their work. The collection grew organically from that curiosity not with the intention of establishing a museum or building an institution, but simply from a desire to learn, understand, and support the art that resonated with me.”
As the collection expanded, the works gradually filled her home and eventually spilled over into the office of her husband, businessman and philanthropist Shiv Nadar. By 2004–2005, it had outgrown the house, the office, and various storage spaces. What had begun as a deeply personal pursuit had evolved into one of the most significant private collections of modern and contemporary Indian art.
Having played a pivotal role at NIIT, where she was involved in shaping the company’s brand identity and strategy, Nadar found herself at a turning point. The growing scale and importance of the collection demanded a new vision, one that would move beyond private stewardship and into the public realm. That vision would ultimately lead to the creation of one of India’s most important cultural institutions, transforming a personal passion into a lasting contribution to the country’s artistic landscape.
“Around 2000, I realised that putting artwork in storage was pointless. It was from that practical concern, rather than any grand design, that the idea of a museum first took shape,” she shares, adding, “I was also becoming increasingly conscious of a wider absence. India had almost no institutional spaces dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The works existed. The artists existed. But the infrastructure to show, sustain, and contextualise that work simply was not there.”
Over time, collecting began to feel like a deeper responsibility. “I felt I should do something more meaningful with the collection. Initially, I only imagined a small museum where people could see the works. I certainly never imagined the scale it has reached today,” shares Nadar.
Around this time, Nadar sought advice from senior gallerists including Arun Vadehra, the founder of Vadehra Art Gallery in New Delhi. “They were generous with advice and felt that I should do something beyond private collecting,” she says
It took five years before Nadar opened her first museum in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, on the HCL (Hindustan Computers Limited) campus, in 2010, with an exhibition titled Open Doors. Within a year, Nadar acquired a space at the DLF South Court Mall, Saket, New Delhi. “Noida was around 18,000 square feet but because it was inside an office complex, people were not naturally coming there. So, we decided to move to a mall, in 2011, and kicked off with the exhibition Time Unfolded,” she shares.
Back then, her decision drew criticism from the art community. Art in a mall? “But, for me, the thinking was simple: accessibility,” she explains. Placing the museum in a public, high-traffic location such as a mall in Saket, meant that people who might not typically walk into an art museum could encounter art in a natural way.
The idea was to break the sense that museums are intimidating or only meant for a small circle of insiders, explains Nadar. “South Court was actually a very nice mall, but it did not have enough stores to bring in the crowds,” says Nadar who focussed on creating exhibitions with strong curatorial themes and reached out to schools in an effort to expand the reach of the museum. “But even then, footfall remained below expectations,” she adds.
Yet, what followed was a quiet, determined programme of community-building that has since transformed not just the museum’s reach, but museum-going culture in many pockets of Delhi NCR. If people could not come to see the art, the team would take the art to people. From visiting housing societies and Resident Welfare Associations across Delhi NCR to drawing younger audiences in through regular school visits and initiatives including Craftopia, a summer art camp designed to give children hands-on experience with Indian crafts and artistic traditions, the cumulative effect has been significant. Participating schools, NGOs and colleges have grown from an average of one to two institutions and 10 to 20 students visiting per week, to an average of six to seven institutions and 400 to 500 students every week.
KNMA has now expanded its engagement beyond exhibitions, creating platforms that invite audiences to experience art in dialogue with other creative disciplines. One such initiative is #WeekendsAtKNMA, a community-led programme that brings together conversations and performances across art, design, architecture, cinema, theatre, literature, poetry, music, and dance. “For me, it was always important that the museum remains democratic and open to everyone. I wanted people from every section of society to feel welcome and not only those who have the means,” states Nadar.
Another initiative that has resonated strongly with audiences is Date Nights at KNMA, which combines world-class art with a thoughtfully curated culinary experience. Launched post-COVID-19, it has quickly become one of the museum’s most sought-after events, with each edition attracting more than 800 registrations for just eight to 10 tables.
“We often receive requests from people who want to celebrate special milestones at the museum. One of my favourite memories is of a young couple who chose KNMA as the space where they wanted to get engaged. It was incredibly moving to see the museum become part of such a personal moment. Those are the kinds of connections that make this work so meaningful.”
Does Nadar see the larger art ecosystem moving towards more inclusive spaces now? “When I first started, I had hoped other collectors would also open up their collections publicly, but it did not really happen. Today, however, there is far more interest and engagement,” she shares, highlighting, “We built our audience through school outreach programmes and exhibitions with broader public appeal shows such as bringing the Caravaggio (Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy) to India for the first time last year in collaboration with the Italian Embassy in New Delhi and the landmark exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters in partnership with Australia’s High Commission and the National Museum of Australia.”
Another key focus is collaboration with public spaces to broaden access to art. Through the Art Hours initiative, KNMA partners with cultural institutions to bring artistic engagement beyond its galleries into shared and public environments. Collaborations with institutions such as the Rail Museum, Craft Museum, National Museum, New Delhi, and other public venues create opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning and meaningful experiences across multiple sites.
In line with its upcoming standalone space, KNMA has been expanding its programming beyond the visual arts. Since launching its performing arts wing in 2023, the museum has presented initiatives such as the KNMA Theatre Festival, Legacy Series, CentreStage Weekend and KNMA in the Park, spanning music, dance, theatre and interdisciplinary performance.
Speaking about this growing focus, Nadar says, “One partnership I am particularly proud of is our collaboration with Sunder Nursery in New Delhi, where we have presented a range of cultural events in a heritage setting. Ratish Nanda, CEO and Director of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, has been phenomenal in supporting our outdoor programming.” Creating a multidisciplinary cultural space that is supportive of all forms of the arts is evidenced in the setting up of a dedicated performing arts wing in the new museum.
It bears mentioning that Nadar’s philanthropy has always been interconnected with education, whether through museums, archives or the wider network of educational initiatives established by the Shiv Nadar Foundation. “Around 1992–93, my mother-in-law told Shiv, ‘You have gained a great deal in life, but you must also give back to society.’ That conversation led to the founding of our first institution in Chennai: Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, named after my father-in-law. From there on, education became a major focus,” she shares.
The foundation has invested over $1.85 billion in its eight landmark institutions and initiatives across education and art. The foundation’s commitment to expanding educational opportunity led to the establishment of VidyaGyan Schools in Bulandshahr and Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh, and Chennai, Tamil Nadu. These are fully residential schools for meritorious children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. “Completely scholarship-based, here everything is covered: uniforms, books, accommodation, education.
We have students [from our schools enrolled] at Stanford University and universities around the world,” she reveals. As the foundation’s educational vision expanded, so did its network of schools. These were followed by the Shiv Nadar schools in Gurugram, Noida, Faridabad, and Chennai. The foundation also acquired the three HDFC Schools now known as The Knowledge Habitat Schools with campuses in Gurugram, Bengaluru, and Pune. “It is all part of a philanthropic model where earnings are reinvested into education,” says Nadar.
Nadar’s influence extends beyond India, as evidenced by KNMA’s collaborations including Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Tate Modern (London) Sharjah Art Foundation (Sharjah), and Barbican (London). “Our recent partnership with the Barbican Centre, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975– 1998, with over half its works drawn from KNMA’s collection, reflects India’s turbulent political and cultural landscape during the Emergency. For a major European institution to narrate India’s Emergency years largely through works from an Indian private museum marks a significant shift in who is seen as authoring and archiving that history,” she says.
KNMA supported and curated the India Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. In 2024, they presented The Rooted Nomad: M.F. Husain, a dual-format project comprising an exhibition and immersive experience in Venice. In 2025, a reimagined version of the immersive component was presented in collaboration with Qatar Museums in Doha. This year, they returned as an official Collateral Event with artist Nalini Malani’s project, Of Woman Born, at the Magazzini del Sale.
Having stepped in at a time when India’s pavilion participation was inconsistent at best, Nadar has made it her mission to ensure the country is represented with seriousness and ambition on one of the world’s most important contemporary art stages. “Qatar now has a pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale, Venice,” she says, which makes her wonder, “If they can achieve that, why can’t India?”
The most compelling aspect of Nadar’s story is that she views her work as unfinished. Her continuing ambition is to work towards a future in which Indian art is seen, valued, and understood both at home and around the world.
Credits:
Photography by Tarun Vishwa
Styled by Malini Banerji
Assisted by Jhalak Jain
Hair and Makeup by Deepa Verma
Production by Bayar Jain
Location: Kiran Nadar's home in New Delhi