Kiran Nadar on Building a Museum

In 2010, avid collector Kiran Nadar opened India’s first private museum devoted exclusively to modern and contemporary art, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), in the heart of New Delhi. Built from a collection that began in her home and has since expanded across two sites in Delhi and Noida, the museum’s growing holdings foreground a remarkable generation of post-independence Indian artists while also engaging the work of younger contemporaries.

Most recently, KNMA has collaborated with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía on Nasreen Mohamedi, a major exhibition dedicated to the Indian modernist (1937–1990). The show—drawn in part from KNMA’s significant holdings of Mohamedi’s work—surveys her drawings, photographs, paintings and collages, with particular attention to her spare, linear abstractions of the 1970s and her singular, independent engagement with Minimalism. At The Met Breuer, where it formed one of the institution’s inaugural presentations, the exhibition has been widely read as a key gesture in The Met’s effort to widen the geographic and historical scope of its modern and contemporary programme.

In this conversation with Anna Dickie, Nadar reflects on her evolution from collecting for the walls of her home to founding a private museum; her early and ongoing commitment to Nasreen Mohamedi’s work; and KNMA’s recent retrospective on Himmat Shah, an artist she believes has been central to the story of modern Indian sculpture.

AD: You began collecting art as a hobby, yet that pastime has led to India’s first private museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. How did you move from buying for your home to founding a museum?

KN: Well I did start collecting for my home and at some point we had enough works to fill the house, so I started putting works into my husband’s office and soon we ran out of space there too. And then I needed to put works into storage, and at some point I realised that just putting work into storage and not seeing them didn’t seem to make much sense. So I thought of putting up a museum.

I didn’t even know what it entailed, it was just a thought in my head. I didn’t realise the commitment and work that would be required.So I started to think about the idea of a private museum about four or five years before I put that idea into reality. And during this period (before we began to build the museum) my commitment to collecting increased. It went beyond being about collecting because I was fond of art, to really becoming very focused on collecting to fill gaps in the collection.

AD: You’ve spoken about “filling gaps” in the collection once the idea of a museum took shape. What kinds of historical or artistic gaps did you feel compelled to address?

KN: Earlier on I was collecting really to fill my house, buying works because I liked them. But then, with the idea of a museum in mind, I started to want to fill historical gaps in the collection. I wanted to ensure we were collecting important work.

AD: There’s an ongoing debate around private museums and the risk that individual taste might come to define the art of our time. How do you think about that risk in relation to KNMA?

KN: I have curators who are helping me with the collection, but I do still rely a lot on my own eye. But I have also become learned (if that is the right word), and my art historical knowledge has grown with my passion for collecting. To this end, I do feel I have a good idea of the importance of various artists, including artists who perhaps have not received the critical attention they should have within the art world, and within specific art historical trajectories. I feel I have sufficient knowledge to understand the breadth of particular artist’s practices, and because of this I am able to recognise where gaps arise that need to be addressed.

AD: The Met Breuer is opening with a major Nasreen Mohamedi exhibition, developed with KNMA and the Reina Sofía. How did you first encounter Mohamedi’s work, and what drew you to collect her in depth?

KN: Well I knew of her work in a basic way, although I didn’t have any great knowledge. Then a group of her works was offered to me, and I was taken by the work. I decided that this was an artist I wanted to pursue in depth. That was five or six years ago, and from then I started collecting her work seriously.

I thought of having a retrospective dedicated to her work about two years ago, because at that point nobody had given her such a show. So we did, and we had 140 odd works, some of which were part of our collection, but many also were loaned by various collectors. It was a fabulous show. It got noted by a lot of people, including by the curators from the Reina Sofía and The Met. So, in our [Kiran Nadar Museum of Art] little history, it was a very monumental show.

AD: How did the collaboration with the Reina Sofía and The Met evolve into the exhibition now at The Met Breuer?

KN: Well it developed really from discussions with Manuel Borja-Villel [director] of the Reina Sofía. Manuela saw the show and then spoke to us, and said he would like to exhibit the show at the Reina Sofía, and that he also wanted to discuss it with The Met. And so we discussed it with The Met, and Sheena Wagstaff [Chairman of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art] was very excited about the idea of showing the exhibition in New York. And so from this we showed the exhibition first at the Reina Sofía and now it is at The Met.

AD: Mohamedi’s practice is often described in phases—from early, more figurative work to linear drawings and later photographs. Which aspects of her work do you feel most closely connected to, and why?

KN: Her early work is figurative to some extent. Then there is her linear works, and then her photographs. Her photographs, I think, are quite extraordinary. I am interested by all of her work, but it is her linear work and her photographs that I particularly enjoy.

AD: Beyond her contribution to abstraction, Nasreen’s life—her extensive travels and the illness she worked through—has become part of how she is discussed. How does her biography shape the way you see the work?

KN: Yes, she was a great traveller. She also developed a particular illness quite early in her career. It was an illness akin to Parkinson’s disease and it impacted the motion of her hands, but she still managed to continue to create her work until she died. Bearing her illness in mind, the detailing and precision in her work is quite amazing. She worked tirelessly and she continued her craft—it must have been very difficult to work through that physical trauma.

AD: How do you view The Met’s decision to open The Met Breuer with a show dedicated to Nasreen Mohamedi in the context of ‘shaking up’ art historical narratives?

KN: I think it’s a fascinating step to see an institution like The Met focusing on art originating from Asia. To open up such a major building as The Met Breuer with an exhibition dedicated to an Indian artist ... well, it’s a huge step. I think we will now see a lot more artists from different countries being promoted and shown. I think that’s a major step for The Met. It’s a major step for Indian art too.

AD: Is there any other particular artist you feel passionately has yet to receive their due, and whose work is deserving of the type of institutional showing that Nasreen’s work is currently receiving at The Met?

KN: There are a lot of artists in the Indian context who deserve a retrospective at The Met, but it’s early days and we have to see how The Met progresses their journey with Indian art. I’m sure we could have discussions with them. I don’t want, off the top of my head, to talk about any particular artist, as such. But there are lots.

I can tell you what has really excited me recently though: the retrospective we have on at the [Kiran Nadar] museum dedicated to the work of Himmat Shah.

AD: Tell me more about why you think he is important?

KN: He made an extraordinary contribution to the discourse of modern Indian art. Working on this retrospective was a real eye-opener for me. The exhibition presents around 300 works, with 215 coming from the museum’s collection. Other works were loaned from various public and private institutions and collections.

He really was one of the early modern sculptors to work with terracotta and the exhibition includes a number of his terracotta sculptures, which are quite fascinating. He also worked in bronze. We have a large collection of his terracotta works, and some in bronze. In addition, along with his famous terracotta sculptures, bronzes, and drawings, the exhibition also explores his lesser-known mediums, including high-relief murals, burnt paper collages and silver paintings.

AD: Tell me about the silver paintings?

KN: His silver paintings are really quite fascinating. They are textured... it is very difficult to describe these works in words because they are so sensitively and beautifully defined.

AD: You have had the museum now for over six years—over this time have you noticed the museum’s audience change?

KN: Yes, definitely. A lot of the art world is especially interested in the museum. We get a lot of interest from the arts community, but our audience is increasingly extending beyond this. We have to work to grow our audience. We have an ‘Outreach’ programme, and part of this, for example, includes working with schools. Art education is a priority for the museum and for that purpose, talks are led by curators in order to enable activity, discussion and learning. We have an average of two schools visit a week.

The level of interest has certainly gone up. —[O]

Main image: Image: Kiran Nadar, Chairperson, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. Courtesy Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.