Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is a private museum of modern and contemporary art located in New Delhi, India. Established in 2010, it holds the distinction of being India's first private museum dedicated specifically to modern and contemporary art. Sponsored by the Shiv Nadar Foundation and initiated by collector Kiran Nadar, the institution operates as a non-commercial, charitable project aimed at fostering understanding and appreciation of modern and contemporary art from India and the broader South Asian region.

The museum opened to the public in January 2010, beginning as a gallery within the premises of HCL Technologies in Noida. Its inaugural exhibition, titled Open Doors, drew from Kiran Nadar's personal acquisitions over the preceding two decades and signaled a pivotal moment in twentieth-century Indian art. After approximately one year, the museum relocated to the South Court Mall at Saket District Centre in Delhi, inaugurating the new space with the exhibition Time Unfolded, which featured works by fifty artists. In 2019, the museum selected architect David Adjaye to design a major new building near Indira Gandhi International Airport. Spanning approximately 100,000 square meters, the planned structure will include eleven galleries for temporary exhibitions and rotating displays of the collection, along with spaces for the performing arts, with an anticipated opening in 2026.

The collection concentrates on modern and contemporary Indian art, with particular strength in twentieth-century painters. It encompasses members of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group, including Francis Newton Souza, Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde, Maqbool Fida Husain, Sayed Haider Raza, Krishnaji Howlaji Ara, and Hari Ambadas Gade. The holdings extend to works from periods before and after Indian independence, and are supplemented by pieces from younger contemporary artists. The geographic scope reaches beyond India to include art from Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as works by diaspora artists. The represented media range widely: painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, photography, video, installation, and assemblage.

The core collection includes historically significant works by celebrated modernists such as Raja Ravi Varma, Jamini Roy, A. Ramachandran, Arpita Singh, Jogen Chowdhury, Krishen Khanna, Manjit Bawa, N. S. Harsha, Ram Kumar, Rameshwar Broota, and Subodh Gupta, alongside international figures such as Anish Kapoor. Two acquisitions stand out for their record-breaking significance. In 2010, Kiran Nadar purchased Sayed Haider Raza's seminal painting Saurashtra for 16.42 crore ($3,486,965) at Christie's in London, a work that entered the permanent collection. In 2015, she acquired Francis Newton Souza's monumental 8 ft by 4 ft oil painting Birth (1955) for 26.41 crore, a work considered among his finest. The collection also holds Amrita Sher-Gil's Self-Portrait as a Tahitian (1934), an oil painting by the Indo-Hungarian artist.

The museum's current location is in New Delhi, with previous sites in Noida and the South Court Mall at Saket District Centre. The forthcoming building designed by David Adjaye near Indira Gandhi International Airport represents a dramatic expansion, covering approximately 93,124.3 square meters (1,002,382 square feet). This new structure will provide substantially increased exhibition spaces for temporary exhibitions and permanent collection displays, alongside dedicated areas for performing arts.

The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art is a private institution sponsored by the Shiv Nadar Foundation, operating as a non-profit entity. It maintains a website at www.knma.in. The museum's locations have been in New Delhi and Noida, with its current operations in New Delhi and the future Adjaye-designed building planned for the area near Indira Gandhi International Airport.