Established through the initiative of avid art collector Kiran Nadar, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) opened to the public in January 2010 as India’s first private museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art from the subcontinent. KNMA is a not-for-profit institution supported by the Shiv Nadar Foundation. It seeks to foster a dynamic relationship between art and culture through its exhibitions, publications, educational initiatives, and public programs. Committed to institutional collaborations and artist support networks, KNMA actively engages with diverse audiences through its wide-ranging programming. KNMA supports artists whose works engage with social and political questions while expanding a global understanding of South Asian art.

KNMA has presented major exhibitions by artists including Nalini Malani, Zarina, Nasreen Mohamedi, Raqs Media Collective, and regularly collaborates with leading international institutions like Barbican Centre and Tate Modern London, Qatar Museums in Doha, the Public Art Fund, Museum of Modern Art, and Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, among others. The museum’s ever-expanding collection of over 16,000 artworks from South Asia features some of the most significant modernist and contemporary works. Now broadening its scope to include classical, folk, and indigenous art, the collection spans from the 3rd century CE to the 20th century, tracing historical trajectories in Indian art alongside the experimental practices of young contemporaries.

KNMA is set to evolve into a landmark cultural destination with a new location, an expansive 100,000- square-meter (over 1 million square feet) architectural marvel, near the Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi. It will feature multiple exhibition spaces, a performance arts centre, an education block, an archive centre, a library, restaurants, and a members’ room. Strengthening its role as a cultural epicentre, this expansion will further KNMA’s mission to be a vibrant hub for visual and performing arts, fostering artistic innovation and cultural dialogue. The vision for the new space is to bridge the gap between art and the public.