India’s largest personal artwork museum, the Kiran Nadar Museum of Artwork (KNMA) in New Delhi, has appointed Manuel Rabaté as its first chief govt and director. He joins from the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the place he has served because the inaugural director since 2016.
Rabaté will transfer to KNMA within the first half of 2026, because it prepares to broaden considerably its footprint and scope, shifting from its current website inside a shopping center to its personal 100,000 sq. m constructing close to the Indira Gandhi Worldwide Airport.
The brand new museum is predicted to open “in two to a few years”, in line with a spokesperson. Upon its completion, the David Adjaye Associates-designed complicated would be the “largest museum and cultural centre in South Asia”, says KNMA’s founder, Kiran Nadar, in a press release, and comprise quite a few exhibition, efficiency and theatre areas, a library, an archive and an schooling centre.
The Delhi posting will probably be Rabaté’s first at a non-public museum. He arrived at Louvre Abu Dhabi after having helped to develop it as the pinnacle of Agence France-Muséums, a consultancy arrange for that objective, following an settlement between France and the UAE. Beforehand he held directorial roles at Paris’s Musée Quai du Branly and Musée du Louvre.
Rabaté tells The Artwork Newspaper: “I’ve at all times had a eager curiosity in South Asia and in India particularly for each its cultural richness and its institutional life. I’m excited to be a part of a undertaking that may change the museum panorama of the subcontinent. My position will probably be transversal to the complete lifetime of the museum, participating with all its actions, with the first deal with making certain readiness to function on the highest worldwide and regional requirements, to serve India and its communities and its guests.”
He’ll work alongside KNMA’s current management group, together with its two current administrators, the chief curator Roobina Karode, and Deepanjana Klein, who oversees acquisitions and growth, in addition to Nadar, who serves because the chairperson. Rabaté’s appointment brings “international museum management and deep expertise to KNMA, serving to realise the establishment’s imaginative and prescient of working on the highest worldwide requirements whereas remaining rooted within the area”, in line with a press release.
For the reason that inception of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Rabaté has overseen the museum’s operations, together with the development of its Jean Nouvel-designed constructing, establishing worldwide partnerships, rising its everlasting assortment and growing its exhibition programme. He additionally recruited a group of curators in a area the place few such roles existed previous to the museum’s arrival.
His expertise in main a common museum, whose assortment spans pre-history to the current day, will show helpful on the KNMA, which is widening its present remit of Fashionable and modern South Asian artwork to embody earlier classes similar to antiquities and miniature work.
