Collector Kiran Nadar on Indian art and building museums

“I never had any formal art training: I just learnt as I went along,” says Indian collector and philanthropist Kiran Nadar. Her vast collection of South Asian art now numbers 15,000 pieces, a small selection of which is being shown in a major exhibition at the Barbican cultural centre in London, The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998.

In Nadar’s London home, an elegant apartment in a listed building overlooking Regent’s Park, one wall is dominated by a painting of horses by MF Husain — often known as the “Picasso of India” — while, on another wall, a painting by Manjit Bawa shows a flautist playing to a group of grey cows. Small sculptures by Henry Moore are dotted around on the tables and a beautiful inlaid ivory cabinet stands by the door.

Nadar, wearing a flowing green, pink and orange robe, is relaxed, friendly and open as we sit down to talk about how she started collecting, her philanthropy and the new museum she is opening in Delhi.

Her collecting began once she was married. After studying English literature at university in India, Nadar met her husband, Shiv Nadar, the billionaire founder of India’s HCL Technologies, when she was working in advertising and he was a client. “My first major art purchase was of two works by MF Husain for our home — in fact he was asked to paint one but he brought us two, so we kept them. And then I bought a graphic male nude, “Runners” (1982), by Rameshwar Broota — my husband was horrified! I was a bit crestfallen and told him we had to go to the studio and apologise [for changing our minds], but when he met the artist he said I was right to have the painting. And it is in his study to this day.”

But it was only after buying work by Manjit Bawa that she became “galvanised”: “I never really thought I was collecting, just acquiring. But then it reached a stage that we had no more wall space and I was just putting them into storage. It wasn’t even formalised storage, it was in the basement. I realised it was a bit futile to leave them like that.

By 2010 she had acquired 500 works, so she decided to create a space to show them, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) — initially on the HCL campus in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, then in South Court Mall in New Delhi, supported by the Shiv Nadar Foundation. A vast new museum, designed by Adjaye Associates, will open on a 100,000-square-metre site directly across from the Indira Gandhi international airport in New Delhi in 2026 or 2027.

I ask her about the choice of the Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye for her new museum. Since that decision was taken in 2019, Adjaye has been accused of sexual assault, sexual harassment and promoting a toxic work culture according to an investigation in the Financial Times last year, allegations which he has denied.

“The choice [of Adjaye] was made by a jury . . . which whittled applicants to six, out of the initial 60. And Adjaye was the outright winner,” says Nadar. (A 2019 press release said there were five on the shortlist from 47 applicants.) “At that stage, we had absolutely no idea about David’s personal life and we had paid about two-thirds of what our commitment was. So we continue to work with Adjaye Associates and David will not be involved as a person, on any of our projects, until such time that we are comfortable. That’s the way it stands today.”

While her collecting focus was on works by the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, a Mumbai-based collective of artists synthesising Indian art history and European Modernism from 1947, she also bought contemporary art: “I bought at huge prices. Then the crash came and even today some of the works haven’t reached what I paid for them at that time.” That “crash”, specifically in Indian art, took place in 2006-07 and was fuelled by speculation and the creation of art funds. Prices continued to fall over the next few years, in some cases, as she says, never to recover.

“We’re keen that Indian art gets more international recognition,” she says. KNMA part-funded the Indian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019 (only the second time the country has staged one) and this year organised a retrospective of MF Husain there. “India is such an important country. Every country has a pavilion [at the Biennale] and so should we; if there is no space in the Giardini, there must be another important space [the Biennale organisers] can give us. I think at the next Biennale, India will have its own space.”

As well as Indian art, Nadar’s collection includes western names: she mentions Antony Gormley, Olafur Eliasson and William Kentridge, as well as South Asian diaspora artists such as Shahzia Sikander, Anish Kapoor and Raqib Shaw.

Art isn’t her only passion. “I’m actually very multi-dimensional!” she exclaims, waving a hand in the air. She is one of India’s foremost bridge players and will represent her country at the World Bridge Games in Buenos Aires this year.

I bring the conversation back to the future of her collection. “For the moment it is funded by the foundation, but there will be an endowment. I can’t be here for ever, and I can’t leave it in hands where it’s not going to serve: we will make sure it will be very, very professional.”

‘The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998’ runs to January 5, barbican.org.uk