The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in New Delhi will take over Christie’s London headquarters this summer for a month-long non-selling exhibition titled "The Meeting Ground: Scenes from the KNMA Collection" (16 July-21 August). The show will feature 180 works by 60 Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi artists from the 1950s to the present, drawn from billionaire collector Kiran Nadar’s vast collection of South Asian Modern art. The exhibition anticipates the delayed relocation of KNMA to a new 100,000 sq. m building near Delhi airport, designed by David Adjaye and now about 60% complete, with former Louvre Abu Dhabi director Manuel Rabaté appointed to run the museum.
This collaboration matters because it places South Asian Modern and contemporary art in a major Western auction house venue at a time of increasing geopolitical division, highlighting cross-border artistic exchanges that transcend national conflicts. Nadar’s collection, one of the largest of its kind globally, has helped drive the Indian art market boom, and the exhibition signals a new phase of institutional openness and international visibility for the region’s art. It also underscores KNMA’s strategy of building global partnerships and digitizing archival resources before its new museum opens in 2028.