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Eye For Originality
Verve
|July 2017
Ardent collector Kiran Nadar has always followed her heart, whether she is setting up a museum or choosing her next acquisition. In conversation with Sharmi Ghosh Dastidar she reveals what keeps her going
She is known for being on her toes. “How else would one run two museums? You have to channelise all your energies and work as if there are 12 instead of 24 hours in a day,” says Kiran Nadar, wrapping up work in Delhi before she leaves on a two-month-long voyage that will take her to the Venice Biennale and the Documenta art fair in Athens.
The two Kiran Nadar Museums of Art (KNMA), in Saket and Noida, are emblematic of this prolific nature of their founder and director. Even as we catch up with her and map her significant rise in India’s art mart, KNMA is exhibiting a string of seven exhibitions titled Stretched Terrains that include solo shows of modern masters — M. F. Husain, F. N. Souza and S. H. Raza — showcasing their formative works from the 1950s and 1960s. There’s also the original model of Delhi’s recently demolished Hall of Nations on display.
An avid collector, a philanthropist and an international bridge player who segued into becoming a museum director, Nadar has inspired many within the community. Her affair with art started in the 1980s when she was doing up her house after getting married to technology czar Shiv Nadar. She interacted at length with Husain, who was commissioned to create paintings for her home (iconic works like Yatra and
This story is from the July 2017 edition of Verve.
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