Meet the Gallerists with a New Vision for Art Fairs https://ift.tt/6aIXHJr

For the past two years, Manhattan’s Estonian House has hosted Esther, an alternative art fair, across its enchanting Beaux Arts floors. Gallerists Margot Samel and Olga Temnikova founded the event in 2024, gathering just a few dozen galleries to participate; it’s much smaller than Frieze New York, which runs at the same time. “From the beginning, Esther was imagined as a way to slow the pace of the fair experience,” Samel told Artsy. She knows many collectors who have recently stepped away from the endless fair circuit. “For them, Esther felt closer to an exhibition; something to move through attentively.”

Though the fair was originally conceived as a one-off and extended twice, it’ll end this May with its third edition—“enough [time] to fully explore the format without pretending it needed to become something permanent,” explained Samel. It’ll be a loss, but Esther is just one of many events rethinking the traditional fair model and ratcheting down pressure for gallerists and collectors alike.

Major players like Art Basel and Frieze pack hundreds of cookie-cutter booths into their sprawling and often industrial spaces. They promise galleries a reputational boost and access to new collectors at a steep toll, at times costing $20,000 or more in booth and transportation fees. As Samel told Artsy last year: “Adding a few wall washers or spotlights can easily cost $1,000–$2,000, electrical outlets range from $200–$600, [and] building extra walls can run anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars.”

Alternative fairs focus instead on accessibility and affordability. Most offer free entry to guests and low exhibitor fees. This translates to a looser atmosphere and inspires visitor curiosity. “People tend to stay a lot longer, see everything, and talk a lot more than at a large fair,” noted gallerist Chris Sharp, who launched Place des Vosges in Paris in 2024 and Post-Fair in Los Angeles a year later. He approached both with the same ethos: “How do you make [visitors] want to stay? You offer them a unique and beautiful setting in which to view art without the crowds.”

Experimental venues and stagings are indeed major draws. Last year, the nonprofit association Basel Social Club (BSC), largely funded by Swiss institutions like the Migros supermarket empire, packed the Art Basel crowd into the former private bank Vontobel. In London, the self-described “non-fair” Minor Attractions—founded by gallerists Jonny Tanna and Jacob Barnes—launched in 2023 across multiple locations in Soho and London Bridge. Since 2024, participants have paid roughly $6,200 to take over a room at art collector Rami Fustok’s buzzy Mandrake Hotel.

Such domestic or intimate settings offer tonal shifts, stripping away the intimidation of larger fairs’ labyrinthine layouts. This atmosphere may be particularly appealing to novice collectors just finding their feet, and it is also invaluable to participants. When Cedric Bardawil showed works at Minor Attractions 2025, “some visitors stayed for as long as two hours,” he told Artsy. “With a comfortable bed to sit on, we could play music in the room and create a real vibe.”

Yet these offbeat models also invite their own issues. Just like at large fairs, renting space and building out walls and lighting eat into the budget; the difference is that organizers absorb these costs rather than exhibitors and visitors. For gallerist Brigitte Mulholland, whose inaugural 7 Rue Froissart fair in October 2025 offered free entry and charged less than $5,000 per exhibitor, this meant constant problem-solving: She says she found, leased, insured, installed, and deinstalled the fair space on her own.

The risks aren’t only financial; the format itself sometimes fails. When Basel Social Club took over roughly 124 acres of sprawling farmland in 2024, gallerist Dennis W. Hochköppeler—whose Cologne-based gallery Drei pulls double duty by participating in BSC and Art Basel concurrently—witnessed what happens when experimentation runs up against reality. Although he said this edition was “extremely well received, especially by young audiences,” he also shared that some visitors struggled to use the special art fair app and that the land’s expanse impeded communication between guests. Nevertheless, Hochköppeler noted, “Unpredictability makes up the charm of the whole thing in comparison to a conventional fair.”

While these new art fair environments bring up financial and logistical trade-offs, the end result is often worth the struggle. Though Mulholland ultimately took a loss of “a touch over $5,000” on producing the inaugural 7 Rue Froissart—“mainly due to unexpected material costs and [a] last-minute scramble for builders”—she was happy to watch collectors and curators filter in while gallerists forged new relationships. “Everything felt very organic and honest,” she noted. “It was always a risk, [but] it’s important to keep art open and accessible, and that was also what set us apart.”

Mulholland and her peers are both bucking tradition and drawing on a robust history. Since the first crop of modern and contemporary art fairs began with 1967’s Cologne Art Market and Art Basel’s launch in 1970, smaller events have drawn gallerists and collectors seeking more close-knit affairs. In 1996, art dealer Rupert Goldsworthy packed sixteen international galleries into an empty East Berlin department store for Berlin Mitte ’96, set against the backdrop of the first annual European Art Forum, located at the expansive Messe Berlin Exhibition and Trade Complex (which was itself formed out of frustration with Cologne’s fair).

One of the first major constellations of these events emerged in Miami after the seismic impact of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2002. Other smaller fairs quickly set up shop, with NADA Art Fair, by the nonprofit New Art Dealers’ Alliance group, charging $2,500 per booth in 2003, and Scope Miami charging $5,000 per participant for their TownHouse Hotel–set event in 2004—a steal compared to the $35,000 charged for some shared booths at Basel. This trend of major fairs inspiring smaller, satellite events continued through the late 2010s as the market grew saturated, expanding from fewer than 50 fairs in the early 2000s to over 400 by 2019, according to The Observer.

When the pandemic arrived and art selling moved online, many collectors and gallerists sought to trim their fair schedules when the industry reopened. Smaller, boutique formats with only a few dozen participants became attractive alternatives; Esther, Basel Social Club, 7 Rue Froissart, and Minor Attractions all sprang up in the past five years, while other small fairs took the pandemic as time to pause to recharge and rethink their model.

While those events run concurrently with major fairs to capitalize on the large crowds, some, like the NOMAD series in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and the Hamptons, New York, intentionally stage their editions outside major art world events and centers to create boutique experiences. When Half Gallery’s director Erin Goldberger and founder Bill Powers launched Upstairs Art Fair in 2017, they also settled on an event outside the fair calendar—and the city. A big red barn in Amagansett, New York, became their home for three years, attracting collectors and locals with a strong showcase for emerging talent.

When Upstairs Art Fair relaunched in 2025 after a six-year, COVID-induced break, it moved to the Hotel Grand Amour in Paris, running alongside Art Basel Paris. “Smaller projects like Upstairs Art Fair certainly shouldn’t replace an institutional fair,” Goldberger told Artsy. “We still are a part of them as well, but it definitely makes the stakes and stresses lower.” This lowered pressure, she noted, allows for open, casual dialogues about much more than just what’s sold out.

Indeed, when galleries cohabitate in smaller fairs, cooperation can thrive. After showing works next to each other at 7 Rue Froissart, New York’s Slip House and London’s Chili decided to share a booth at the upcoming Felix Art Fair in Los Angeles. Mulholland was thrilled. “It was absolutely one of the goals of the fair—to foster collaborative relationships between galleries,” she said.

This embrace of slow, purposeful connection explains why many alternative fairs are resistant to scaling up or, as in Esther’s case, were initially conceived as one-offs. “In this moment, intimacy is more important than scalability,” Mulholland told Artsy. “I think the art world is in a real moment of sea change, and the notion that bigger is better has proven to be what bursts first when the bubble collapses.” Slowing down, at a smaller scale, doesn’t have to mean losing business. As Hochköppeler keenly noted: “If a collector wants something, they’ll let you know.”

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First gallery for Pan-African contemporary art in San Francisco to open in 2026. https://ift.tt/jJxXMT5

San Francisco’s first gallery dedicated entirely to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, the Art of Contemporary Africa (AOCA), will open next month on February 12th. The gallery, which will showcase both leading and emerging African artists who work across painting, sculpture, ceramics, installation, photography, and mixed media, is helmed by industry veteran Craig Mark and celebrated South African photographer Clint Strydom. It is based at the Minnesota Street Project in the city’s Dogpatch neighborhood.

AOCA will mark the occasion with an inaugural group exhibition “Afropop” showcasing a selection of its artists including Dr. Esther Mahlangu, who the gallery exclusively represents, as well as Ayanda Mabulu, Noria Mabasa, Willie Bester, Clint Strydom, Médéric Turay, and Samuel Allerton. The show, as does the gallery, aims to underscore Africa’s important contributions to the global contemporary art discourse and to move the continent and its breadth of voices prominently into the spotlight as more than just a place where art is made. While the gallery’s physical presence is a new development, it has already spent years participating in fairs including Expo Chicago, 1-54 New York, the Seattle Art Fair, and the Atlanta Art Fair. It is the sister gallery to The Melrose Gallery, a prominent Pan-African contemporary art gallery located in Johannesburg and also run by Mark.

“In South Africa, we embrace ubuntu, meaning ‘I am because you are.’ It celebrates the spirit of our shared humanity, connectedness, and collective responsibility,” said Mark, the gallery’s director. “San Francisco practices that spirit every day, and it’s a big reason why we made this city our home.” The AOCA joins the Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) and the Nexus Black Arts Festival as local champions of the African diaspora’s artistic output, further cementing San Francisco as a hub for African art.

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The Rise (and Rise) of the Ultra-Vertical Painting https://ift.tt/z0OaW8B

The Comforter, Spirit Of The Deep, 2024
Enoch Jr Chinweuba
Janet Rady Fine Art

We are exposed to thousands of images daily. On social media and within galleries, the 3-by-4 rectangle and square formats dominate, allowing us to easily glide past or scroll through masses of images. In this context, a new shape of artwork is proliferating across gallery shows and art fair booths. Today, artists are finding new ways to help their artworks stand out, creating exaggerated long, narrow works that demand attention. These visually intense, “ultra-vertical” paintings are at least twice as tall as they are wide, sometimes more, making an instant impact. They reassert the artist’s authorship and power to command attention, forcing their viewers to break out of a fatigued, passive state induced by endless digital and commercial imagery.

Nigerian painter Enoch Jr Chinweuba said he stumbled upon the format intuitively a couple of years ago when he was drawn to the sight of two side-by-side 40-by-40-centimeter stretchers in the studio, together appearing as if one long, narrow canvas. This led him to begin working with single canvases of similar dimensions. While he considered this might be a risky move considering the conventional formats favored by curators and collectors, he wanted to be “true to [his] desire to explore”. His 2024 acrylic painting The Comforter, Spirit of the Deep is rich with shadow, showing a young woman surrounded by doves. Here, Chinweuba wanted to “place a special kind of focus on the muse,” adding “the entire painting feels like a doorway” through which the viewer might bring their own ideas about the subject and her narrative.

SUNBUMS OUT WEST, 2024
Milan Young
Gillian Jason Gallery

CHAPTER 1, 2023
Milan Young
Gillian Jason Gallery

Emerging American artist Milan Young is also intrigued by the potential of this unusual format to evoke a doorway or portal, inspired in part by British fantasy novel The Chronicles of Narnia. “As a child, I was fascinated by the idea that an everyday object, a wardrobe, could open onto an entirely different world,” said the artist. “That something so small could contain an experience so vast.” Her painting SUNBUMS OUT WEST (2024) was shown at Gillian Jason Gallery’s booth at 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair the year it was made, and it includes acrylic, oil, and graphite. It could be described as peak ultra-vertical painting, stretching 150 centimeters high but just 60 centimeters wide. It features an intense mass of golden and deep brown marks, focusing on abstract emotional complexity rather than legibility. “What I try to offer is an atmosphere, an emotional temperature, for viewers to enter.”

While most contemporary painting uses square or more regular rectangular shapes, tall and narrow dimensions have a long art historical tradition. Today, artists are using that association to elevate the subjects of their paintings, drawing upon devotional or dramatic conventions of the past.

Basing her work on towering artworks of all kinds throughout history, British artist Louise Giovanelli creates monumental zoomed-in paintings. For example, her vertically extended painting Silo (2022) shows only part of an ear and the side of a cheek, with a single giant ringlet of hair running down the canvas. It was exhibited at her first White Cube show “As If, Almost” in 2022 and at He Art Museum in Foshan, China, in 2024 for her debut Asian solo exhibition. Similarly elongated canvases Alter (2022) and Enthoegoen (2023) were included in her early 2025 show “A Song of Ascents” at the Hepworth Wakefield, both showing ecstatic close-ups of young women’s faces. She describes her long works, which stretch up to three meters high, as “totemic,” elevating her everyday subjects. “Those vertical slabs inevitably bring to mind ancient history: the towering columns of the Pantheon, shamanistic totems, religious icons, or the slender verticality of stained-glass windows in Gothic cathedrals.”

In his current show at London gallery Sid Motion, Graham Silveria Martin has two tall, narrow paintings that tightly crop details of historical works. For instance, the Scottish artist’s ethereal acrylic painting Cloak of Theseus (after Canova) (2025) is inspired by Antonio Canova’s marble sculpture Theseus and the Minotaur (ca. 1782). “I was aware of a connection with art historical religious painting…to suggest reverence for the subject in its totemic form.” He also noted that the shape offers “the suggestion of a panel that makes up the anatomy of an altarpiece.”

Charlotte Edey is also inspired by the verticality of religious art. At Ginny on Frederick’s booth at Frieze London 2024, the British artist presented eight long, narrow, mixed-media works that surrounded the booth. Their tall shapes were divided up into sections by fine panels of wood meant to reference doors and stained-glass windows, in Edey’s words, “forming portals to exit throughout the booth.” In her current solo exhibition at James Cohen in New York, unusually narrow works will hang both vertically and horizontally. “Elongation is a narrative tool that implies passage, sort of storyboarding, to establish a choreography of looking across the work as if it were unfolding over time,” she said in an interview.

For many artists, the long shape of these canvases also references the shape of the human body. “I find the stretched proportions, particularly vertically, implicate the body as they suggest a sort of containment,” said Edey. “The viewer has to renegotiate how they enter the work by getting closer.” Giovanelli also considers the viewer’s body when making her long canvases: “Because of their proportions, [the paintings] become anthropomorphic. They stand like silent figures in the room, confronting the viewer at roughly human height.”

At times, these narrow canvases create unsettling effects. In Lydia Pettit’s 2023 painting The Seduction, the American artist painted herself clutching a knife in her black-gloved hand. The blade glistens with a reflection of her rageful face and naked shoulder. The violence of this work—inspired by sexual trauma and the psychological conflict that followed—is enhanced by its intense verticality, which exaggerates the sharp presence of the knife. A fan of horror films, Pettit conjures the familiar shot of a camera panning up the length of a knife or sword, though in this case the viewer sees it in a terrifying, single view.

Other artists play with the format’s disarming potential by using its unusual space to show parts of a scene that exist outside the natural eyeline. In Danielle Fretwell’s oil painting Between Need and Gift (2025), which was on show at NADA New York 2025 with Alice Amati, a still life setup is elongated to a surreal degree. Its silky tablecloth stretches down the canvas and dwarfs the fruit in the center. Here, the American artist explores the line between painting and digital imagery; this extended work feels artificially stretched and requires the viewer to keep looking.

Between Need and Gift, 2025
Danielle Fretwell
Alice Amati

Entry Points, 2024
Lydia Pettit
Guts Gallery

With their unconventional proportions and unusual use of space, ultra-vertical paintings trigger immediate attention from a visually fatigued audience. Whether they reveal or conceal more than we would usually see on a canvas, these works toy with our expectations and make us take another look. “The paintings frustrate because they refuse full disclosure,” said Giovanelli. “This combination—bodily confrontation paired with visual withholding—produces something that is simultaneously frustrating, enchanting, and mysterious.”

Browse more ultra-vertical paintings for narrow walls and unconventional spaces in Artsy’s collection.

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Painter Emil Sands will be co-represented by Victoria Miro and Olney Gleason. https://ift.tt/rsGt5xy

New York-based painter and writer Emil Sands is now co-represented by a joint partnership between Olney Gleason and Victoria Miro, the two galleries have announced. The British artist’s debut solo show with Victoria Miro, titled “Watchmen,” will be on view at its Venice gallery from February 3rd through March 7th, 2026, while Olney Gleason will unveil a major exhibition later in 2027. The news of co-representation for Sands crowns a period of sharp momentum and explosive growth for the rising star, who only began painting a few years ago and was recently featured in The Artsy Vanguard 2026.

Sands is the latest artist in a string of recent signings for the new Olney Gleason, whose partners Eric Gleason and Nicholas Olney previously worked with the artist at the now-defunct Kasmin on “Salt in the throat,” which ran from January to March 2025. “Emil possesses a level of maturity and a commitment to his painting practice that is so far beyond his age,” said Gleason. “He is an innately gifted painter, but he is also restless in his own technical development of the medium. After a perfect debut solo exhibition last year and the momentum Emil has continued to garner since, we are honored and sincerely excited to now formalize Olney Gleason’s representation of Emil.”

This past fall he completed a residency with Victoria Miro in Venice. Sandsa also recently took part in a three-person show, “The Stories We Tell,” alongside Khalif Tahir Thompson and Tidawhitney Lek in Victoria Miro’s London space. “Witnessing the development of this major new series of paintings, created through the gallery’s studio residency program in Venice, has been a joy. We are delighted to welcome Emil to Victoria Miro and excited to partner with our colleagues at Olney Gleason in New York to champion his work,” said Oliver Miro, a partner at Victoria Miro.

Born in London in 1998, Sands is known for his sensitive depictions of the human form that combine portraiture and landscapes. His figures, painted from friends and family and sometimes himself, are often found by the seaside, the contours of their vulnerable, bare bodies rendered in soft hues. He began painting self-portraits during COVID lockdowns in his family’s London garage following a one-year fine art painting foundation program at Central Saint Martins in 2017. After graduating from Cambridge (where he studied Classics) in 2022, he was soon selected for the Henry Fellowship at Yale University to study fine art and writing. He made his New York solo show debut in 2023 with the downtown gallery Tibor de Nagy.

He also maintains a writing practice, and published an essay entitled “Struck on one Side” in The Atlantic in 2023. His forthcoming memoir, I Am Not Achilles, will be published in 2027 by Scribner in the United States and Picador in the United Kingdom.

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Marian Goodman, legendary New York gallerist, has died at 97. https://ift.tt/VLSlwmg

Marian Goodman, the founder of the eponymous gallery that helped shape the course of New York’s contemporary art scene, died at her home on January 22nd, at the age of 97, according to an official announcement from her gallery.

Over a career that spanned more than five decades, Goodman was known not just for her eye, but for the depth of her commitment to artists. She played a pivotal role in establishing the international reputations of figures such as Gerhard Richter, William Kentridge, Lawrence Weiner, Nan Goldin, Pierre Huyghe. As such, she often maintained working relationships with artists that lasted decades rather than market cycles.

A trailblazing dealer, Goodman entered the art world at a time when women gallerists were still rare. Even earlier, she had already carved out space for herself in academia. In 1960, she enrolled at Columbia University as the only woman in the MA program in art history. Five years later, she founded Multiples, a publishing venture dedicated to prints, artist books, and three-dimensional materials by artists including Man Ray, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Indiana.

Frequent trips to Europe during this period of time proved formative. They introduced her to a generation of artists who would become central to her life’s work and sharpened her focus on contemporary European art. During a visit to Documenta in Kassel in 1968, Goodman met a group of young artists including Marcel Broodthaers and Joseph Beuys. She began collaborating with them soon after, forging relationships that would define her career.

Yet it was not until 1977, frustrated by her inability to find a New York dealer willing to represent Broodthaers, that she opened Marian Goodman Gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition was dedicated to Broodthaers—his first solo show in the United States. Four years later, she mounted Anselm Kiefer’s first U.S. solo exhibition, further cementing her role as a crucial bridge between Europe and the American art world.

Goodman was widely admired for her loyalty and intellectual rigour. She worked with Richter for 37 years, and maintained relationships of more than two decades with artists such as Kentridge, Huyghe, and Chinese artist Yang Fudong.

As her health declined, Goodman gradually withdrew from the gallery’s day-to-day operations in 2021. Since then, the gallery has undergone a period of transition. Richter and photographer Jeff Wall departed the gallery roster to join David Zwirner and Gagosian, respectively, while Philipp Kaiser stepped down as president after six years with the gallery.

Though the gallery has played a defining role in the art world for more than five decades, it has largely resisted rapid expansion. Outside the United States, Marian Goodman Gallery opened two international outposts: Paris in 1995 and London in 2014. The London space closed in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. Within the U.S., the gallery expanded to Los Angeles in 2023 and relocated its New York headquarters to Tribeca, into a new space designed by architect Markus Dochantschi.

Many figures from across the art world have paid tribute online. “She was a guiding star—for her artists, collectors, and for generations of curators and art lovers around the globe,” wrote art dealer and Tate board member Matthias Arndt on Instagram.

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Tarek Atoui to create the next Hyundai Commission for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall. https://ift.tt/28xzfDY

Tate Modern has announced that artist and composer Tarek Atoui will present the 11th Hyundai Commission in the museum’s Turbine Hall. The new site-specific installation will open to the public on October 13, 2026, and run through April 11, 2027.

Atoui, who was born in Beirut and is based in Paris, is known for his experimental approach to sound and his multidisciplinary practice. His immersive installations often feature custom-built instruments—created in collaboration with other artists and technicians—that double as sculptural objects. Incorporating materials such as water, glass, and ceramics, these instruments are activated through breath, touch, or mechanical systems. Atoui blends the resulting sounds with environmental recordings and computer-generated audio to expand the experience of listening into tactile and visual forms.

“Tarek Atoui has captivated audiences internationally with his boundary-pushing approach to sound,” said Catherine Wood, interim director of Tate Modern, in a statement. “Blending music, technology, sculpture, and performance, he is a truly cross-disciplinary artist whose work references current social, historical, and political realities.”

Atoui’s commission follows a series of major Turbine Hall installations that have explored themes ranging from materiality to global histories. Currently on view through April 6, 2026, is Goavve-Geabbil (2025) by Northern Sámi artist Máret Ánne Sara. This monumental installation incorporates reindeer-derived materials and addresses the ecological and political concerns facing Sámi communities.

Previous commissions include Behind the Red Moon (2023) by El Anatsui and Open Wound(2024–25) by South Korean artist Mire Lee. The Hyundai Commission series began in 2015 with an installation by Abraham Cruzvillegas and has since welcomed over 19 million visitors. The partnership between Tate and Hyundai Motor, originally set to end in 2026, was recently extended to 2036.

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Meet 14 Women Shaping India’s Booming Art Scene https://ift.tt/tEYRbKV

Over the past two decades, the Indian art market has undergone a profound transformation into a sophisticated ecosystem of galleries, auction houses, biennales, and art events.

Many long-standing art spaces have remained at the forefront of this transformation, bolstered further by the arrival of pivotal new institutions and market players. Amid this rapidly changing environment, several women are shaping the scene both at home and by sustaining the country’s representation internationally.

What sets them apart is a collective vision for an India that holds space for its art. Some emerge from storied family legacies, while others have built institutions and communities, often from the ground up. Over time, their presence has become integral cogs in the growth of the Indian art ecosystem.

With the India Art Fair, founded in 2008 by Neha Kirpal, set to enter its 17th edition next week, this list shares 12 of the women shaping the country’s art market today.

Nita Mukesh Ambani

Founder and chairperson, Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre

Nita Mukesh Ambani has played a transformative role in shaping India’s cultural landscape by integrating art, heritage, and public access at an unprecedented scale. Through the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre (NMACC), launched in 2023, she has created a landmark institution that brings together visual art, performance, and design under one roof. “When I envisioned an interdisciplinary space like the NMACC, my intent was to not only spotlight India’s vibrant art history, but also offer a global platform to the existing cultural zeitgeist of the country,” she told Artsy in a 2024 interview.

Since its opening, the institution has introduced Indian audiences to major international presentations, including Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Room, shown in India for the first time. Its four-story Art House has hosted a series of large-scale exhibitions, among them, “Sangam/Confluence” curated by Ranjit Hoskote and Jeffrey Dietch, which brought together leading voices of the East and West in a notable cross-cultural dialogue.

The centre has equally placed emphasis on the performing arts by hosting popular musicals such as Mamma Mia! alongside opera, theatre, and dance, reinforcing its interdisciplinary mandate.

Ambani’s patronship of the arts has extended far beyond the country with recent exhibitions such as “Tree & Serpent: Early Buddhist Art in India, 200 BCE–400 CE” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which traced the origins of Buddhist art. This outlook was further reinforced by her daughter, Isha Ambani, who most recently chaired the British Museum gala, positioning Indian patronage within an international institutional context.

Jaya Asokan

Fair director, India Art Fair

Jaya Asokan has served as the director of India Art Fair since 2021. Under her leadership, the fair has strengthened its position as the region’s premier platform for modern and contemporary art from the Indian subcontinent. In 2024, she notably added a design section spotlighting a burgeoning South Asian scene.

Asokan is known for her commitment to inclusive programming and expanding public engagement, making the fair a crucial site of critical discourse and cultural exchange. “I see the fair as a living platform, one that evolves through collaboration, experimentation, and sustained dialogue across communities,” she said.

The fair is set to return for its 17th edition next week, bringing together a record total of 123 exhibitors, including 87 galleries. The Indian market, as Asokan shares, “is at a moment of consolidation and growing confidence.”

“We are seeing a more informed collector base, greater transparency, and stronger alignment between primary-market growth and institutional validation,” she said. “Looking ahead, I see the market moving toward measured, thoughtful, and sustainable growth: fewer speculative spikes, stronger networks across the region, and a clearer articulation of South Asian artistic narratives within the global context.”

Shireen Gandhy

Director, Chemould Prescott Road

Shireen Gandhy grew up alongside a gallery. Gallery Chemould was founded by her parents in 1963, a year before she was born, their “fifth child,” as she put it, “their fourth being the gallery.”

When Gandhy later stepped into its stewardship in 1988, she inherited “something that had no past and a future that came ambling along as they groped somewhat in the dark.” In 2007, she led the gallery’s relocation to a historic loft on Prescott Road in Mumbai.

The gallery is one of the oldest commercial spaces in Mumbai. It has played a crucial role in launching the careers of artists such as S.H. Raza, Tyeb Mehta, and Bhupen Khakhar, among many others. Over more than 35 years in the art world, Gandhy has built a life shaped by enduring relationships.

Her role has rarely been limited to that of a dealer. It is, instead, a constant negotiation between professionalism and “oftentimes counsellor and the conduit between the artist and the world outside of it.” If she had to define it, she says, it comes down to responsibility—“to the artist, to the collector who buys, and to the world that looks at what you present.”

Looking at the art world today, Gandhy sees India as “its own bubble—of immense faith in what is familiar.” Beneath the noise of auctions, she finds reassurance in the primary market’s quieter rhythms, shaped by restraint, care, and long-held trust.

Feroze Gujral

Founder and director, Gujral Foundation

In 2008, the philanthropist, collector, patron, and businesswoman Feroze Gujral founded the Gujral Foundation with her husband, creating a vital platform for art at a time when the market had collapsed and private support was scarce.

The foundation nurtures talent across art, architecture, and design throughout and beyond the Indian subcontinent. “People often think patronage simply means purchasing something—and yes, buying is also a form of support, and it’s important—but that alone is not patronage,” Gujral said. “It’s about creating a consistent structure of support and helping in a sustained, meaningful way.”

Recently, Gujral supported her father-in-law’s exhibition, “Satish Gujral: A Century in Form, Fire, and Vision” at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. The exhibition traces the artist’s trajectory to his centenary, including his pioneering 1952 journey to Mexico.

“We’re always looking to the West, but we shouldn’t. We have nearly two billion people—this is where buying, selling, enjoying, and understanding art should happen, on a Friday night at home,” she said. “Just like Hindustani music or Indian cinema, success has to happen here first.”

Aparajita Jain

Director and co-owner, Nature Morte

Aparajita Jain has introduced innovations and long-overdue public interventions to the Indian public. She’s the founder of India’s first blockchain-powered art platform, Terrain.art, and co-founder of India’s first international sculpture park with the government of Rajasthan. But she is best known for her role at Nature Morte, one of the country’s leading commercial galleries.

“At Nature Morte, I see my role as a catalyst: supporting artists, connecting them with audiences and institutions, and contributing to the larger history of contemporary art,” said Jain. “I want to contribute to the expansion of the voice of Indian artists and establish them firmly on the global map.”

Jain bought into the gallery, founded in New York in 1982 by Peter Nagy, in 2012. Today, it champions experimental, conceptual, and installation-based practices by acclaimed South Asian artists such as Bharti Kher, Asim Waqif, and Jitish Kallat.

Jain has been a driving force behind the country’s market trends, generating momentum around blockbuster shows and propelling Indian artists globally. Most recently, Nature Morte partnered with international mega-gallery Hauser & Wirth to open Kher’s solo show “Mythologies” at the Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen.

She also brings international names to India: The gallery recently opened Ai Weiwei’s first Indian solo exhibition. “I feel a shift in how the world is looking at India, and we’re more ready than ever to share our voices, ideas, and practices globally,” she said. “Today, art is about building a sustained cultural legacy, not just the present moment.”

Amrita and Priya Jhaveri

Founders, Jhaveri Contemporary

Amrita and Priya Jhaveri have been paving the way for South Asian art on the global stage long before they founded Jhaveri Contemporary in 2010. In the mid-1990s, Amrita established Christie's presence in India, helping shape the country’s early engagement with the international art market.

Through their partnership at the gallery, the duo have continued to expand the contours of South Asian art history, organising Anish Kapoor’s first exhibition in India the same year they launched their Mumbai gallery. Since then, the sisters have positioned their gallery as a critical platform for original scholarship, realised through meticulously researched exhibitions. It’s shown contemporary artists such as Rana Begum, Harminder Judge, and Ali Kazim, while also stewarding estates of seminal figures such as Mrinalini Mukherjee and Anwar Jalal Shemza.

“What is compelling is the sheer optimism and energy in the art world, which is in stark contrast to the rest of the Western world,” the pair said of the current market mood. “The curiosity which drives general audiences towards art, as evidenced by the large numbers that attend Mumbai Gallery Weekend or the art fairs in India, is also striking.”

Sangita Jindal

President, ART India Magazine; chairperson, JSW Foundation

Sangita Jindal has spent more than three decades shaping India’s contemporary art and heritage landscape, continuing a legacy of patronage from her mother, Urmila Kanoria, founder of the Kanoria Arts Centre. As chairperson of the JSW Foundation, one of the country’s leading philanthropic organisations, she supports initiatives across social development, heritage conservation, sports and the arts.

In 1996, she founded the pioneering ART India magazine, seeking to articulate a critical discourse around contemporary and modern art in South Asia. To mark the publication’s 30th anniversary this year, Jindal held an open call for 30 artists aged 30 or under. On the soon-to-be announced cohort, she said, “I am genuinely excited by this list. The works are poignant, thoughtful, and deeply attuned to the complexities of our times. They fill me with immense hope for the future of art. It holds tremendous promise.”

In February 2024, Jindal established Hampi Art Labs near the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hampi, India, creating a space for emerging and established artists. The initiative has held exhibitions of works by artists like Dhruvi Acharya and hosted residencies for artists, including Arpita Akhanda and Bhasha Chakrabarti.

Hena Kapadia

Founder and director, TARQ

Hena Kapadia is one of the most exciting young gallerists in the Indian scene. She founded TARQ in 2014, and the Mumbai gallery has distinguished itself by championing emerging and mid-career artists such as Rithika Merchant, Sameer Kulavoor, and Nibha Sikander.

“The work we do at TARQ is, first and foremost, community building,” Kapadia said. “Art thrives only within a vibrant and diverse discourse.”

The gallery maintains a regular presence at art fairs in India and abroad, including Art Basel Hong Kong, where its artist Saju Kunhan was nominated for the MGM Art Discoveries Prize. Reflecting on the contemporary scene, she noted, “The region has a phenomenal number of contemporary artists, each grappling with different issues in unique ways. I’m excited to see how the scene evolves as viewers become more discerning.”

Kiran Nadar

Founder and chairperson, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art

One of India’s most prominent collectors, Kiran Nadar is a pioneer in transforming the country’s institutional standing.

Nadar founded the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in 2010, and the institution has since charted a new course for modern and contemporary art in India. As the country’s first private museum of its kind, it offers free access to world-class exhibitions, bringing South Asian art to the public while asserting its presence on the global stage. “KNMA was born from a desire to share my collection with a wider public and from a realization that India had no institutional spaces that promoted art visibility,” she told Artsy.

In the late ’80s, Nadar set out to buy some art for her house, acquiring works by four artists: Rameshwar Broota, M.F. Husain, Manjit Bawa, and Krishen Khanna. Before long, she recalls, “I had more work than I could put up, and thought I should do something more meaningful with my collection.”

The museum—which is set to launch a new space spanning 1 million square feet—has mounted seminal shows of artists including Gulammohammed Sheikh, Vivan Sundaram, and Nasreen Mohamedi. Nadar’s support has also extended far beyond the New Delhi museum: At the 2024 Venice Biennale, the museum presented “The Rooted Nomad: M.F. Husain” at Magazzini del Sale. It is set to return to the upcoming Venice Biennale later this year, supporting both the country’s pavilion and a new exhibition by Nalini Malani.

“It brings me immense joy to help democratize art, transforming it into a shared cultural experience rather than an exclusive privilege,” she said. “What’s particularly encouraging is seeing young collectors enter the art world—not just as buyers, but as an interactive audience engaging meaningfully with the art.”

Priyanka Raja

Co-founder and director, Experimenter

Priyanka Raja has been at the forefront of shaping India’s contemporary art conversation for over a decade. As co-founder of Kolkata gallery Experimenter, she has helped build a gallery model that privileges ideas, dialogue, and long-term commitment to artists. Launched in 2009, the gallery has been instrumental in providing a space for contemporary and experimental practices, representing artists such as Ayesha Sultana, Sohrab Hura, and Bani Abidi. It also operates the annual curatorial intensive, Experimenter Curators’ Hub.

Raja moves between custodian, collaborator, and cultural producer, positioning the gallery as both a public-facing institution and a critical engine within the market. “At Experimenter, we see ourselves as custodians of our artists’ voices,” Raja said.

“Our responsibility is to create fearless, unbound platforms where the most urgent practices of our time can be seen and debated.” She describes the gallery as “an active space of learning rather than a passive space of viewing.”

Sana Rezwan

Founder, Public Arts Trust of India

Sana Rezwan represents a new generation of Indian patrons and collectors shaping the country’s contemporary art landscape from the ground up.

She started collecting in New York, focusing on South Asian women artists whose practices spoke to her personally, such as Rana Begum and Zarina. After returning to India in 2022, she founded the Public Arts Trust of India (PATI), dedicated to expanding access to art and embedding contemporary practices within lived, local contexts through artist residencies, the PATI learning centre, and their arts education initiatives in collaboration with Government museums and schools.

“I aim to enable wider audiences to engage with art thoughtfully, while fostering dialogue between contemporary practices and local crafts,” said Rezwan. Through initiatives such as Jaipur Art Week and Jodhpur Art Week, she has helped build meaningful art ecosystems outside Delhi and Mumbai.

Rezwan emphasizes the need for platforms that support emerging voices. “We need more platforms that surface emerging artists,” she said, pointing to Jaipur Art Week’s open-call model and focus on solo presentations.

Roshini Vadehra

Director, Vadehra Art Gallery

Roshini Vadehra has been a steady force in the Indian art world since joining her father Arun’s eponymous gallery in 2004. Founded in 1987, the gallery has staged foundational shows for modernists such as M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, and Tyeb Mehta. Under Roshini’s guidance, it has become a platform where historical masters and contemporary voices coexist. In 2005, she opened the gallery’s second space, giving early support to artists including Atul Dodiya, Anju Dodiya, and Shilpa Gupta.

“Working within the art world for me has always meant building bridges between artists and audiences, both within India and internationally,” she says. Vadehra also co-founded the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) to foster contemporary Indian art via education, residencies, public initiatives, and funding.

Roshini has continued to guide the gallery forward, bringing in voices such as Ashfika Rahman and Zaam Arif. Several recent international milestones include its Art Basel Miami Beach debut in 2025 and supporting Arpita Singh’s first international solo institutional exhibition at the Serpentine.

“There is a growing maturity among collectors,” she noted of the current scene. “The market seems to be on a strong trajectory to continue this evolution of solid and meaningful growth and patronage,” she added, highlighting the increase in large-scale platforms like the current Kochi Biennale, India Art Fair, and India’s forthcoming return to the Venice Biennale.

Minal Vazirani

Co-founder, Saffronart and Art Mumbai

Minal Vazirani is the co-founder of Saffronart, the country’s largest auction platform, and the co-founder of Art Mumbai, the city’s first major art fair, which launched in 2023. “When I conceptualized and founded Saffronart in 2000, it was in response to a need I felt as a young buyer—to create greater access to high-quality works of art and pricing transparency,” said Vazirani, who founded both endeavours with her husband Dinesh.

Saffronart quickly expanded internationally and beyond art to include jewellery, textiles, and other collectables. “Building Saffronart turned a personal passion into a decades-long effort that is now a global platform spanning Mumbai, Delhi, New York, and London,” she said.

Saffronart has set multiple auction benchmarks, including the $7.46 million sale of Amrita Sher-Gil’s The Story Teller (1937) in 2023, then the most expensive work by an Indian artist. In 2025, Saffronart’s 25th Anniversary Evening Sale became the highest-value South Asian art auction globally, totalling INR 355.77 crores ($40.2 million).

“What excites me most today is seeing global interest in South Asian art grow,” Vazirani reflected. “Through Saffronart and Art Mumbai, we are creating spaces where artists, collectors, and audiences can meet, explore, and engage with one another. It’s about building a vibrant, sustainable ecosystem that nurtures creativity and fosters dialogue—right here in India, while connecting with the world.”

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