What does it mean to survey India’s art history? More importantly, what does it look like when institutions and museums attempt to stage an exhibition that brings together all its diverse, incongruous threads?

When museums present surveys of Indian art, the story often follows a familiar arc. Modernism occupies centre stage, progressing through a succession of canonical figures and movements, including early-modern artists such as Raja Ravi Varma and M.V. Dhurandhar, and progressive artists such as M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza, and Amrita Sher-Gill, before arriving at contemporary art. Folk, indigenous, and vernacular practices, if and when included at all, frequently appear as supplementary traditions at the peripheries of this mainstream.

‘The Meeting Ground: Scenes from the KNMA Collection’, on view at Christie’s King Street in London from 16 July to 21 August 2026, offers an alternative approach. Organised by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in collaboration with British auction house Christie’s, the exhibition resists the urge to tell a single history of Indian art. Instead, it brings together several of India’s diverse artistic traditions, geographies, generations, and ideas that have long coexisted yet are rarely presented in sustained dialogue.

Curated by Akansha Rastogi alongside Preeti Bahadur, Avijna Bhattacharya, Premjish Achari, and Srinivas Aditya Mopidevi, the exhibition features interconnected “scenes” that portray modernists like M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, Jeram Patel, K.C.S. Paniker, K.G. Subramanyan, and K. Ramanujam as participants in larger conversations about artistic experimentation, regional creative hubs, and diverse visions of modernity. The display also integrates works by Gond master Jangarh Singh Shyam, Warli artist Jivya Soma Mashe, and the collaborative efforts of Gauri Gill and Rajesh Vangad, framing them within the exhibition’s conceptual narrative rather than presenting them as ethnographic counterparts to contemporary art.

Another significant thread of the exhibition explores migration, displacement, and fractured belonging through the work of artists such as Zainul Abedin, Anwar Jalal Shemza, Zarina Hashmi, F.N. Souza, and Bani Abidi. By bringing together artists whose lives traversed the political borders of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the wider South Asian diaspora, the exhibition frames the region as a subcontinent of shattered homelands shaped by migration, collective memory, and contested histories.

This approach signals a broader shift in South Asian curatorial practice. Over the past decade, institutions have increasingly questioned the hierarchies that once placed urban modernism above vernacular and indigenous knowledge. In ‘The Meeting Ground’, Christie’s first summer exhibition programme focused on South Asia and a single institutional partner, presenting these diverse traditions as co-authors of the story.

‘The Meeting Ground’ serves as a statement about what art institutions can become in the 21st century. It suggests that even institutions such as the KNMA, which houses the largest private collection of South Asian art, are not repositories of settled histories but living sites of negotiation, where multiple artistic lineages, identities, and memories can coexist without being folded into a single definitive narrative.

‘The Meeting Ground’ will run at Christie’s King Street, London, from the 16th of July to the 21st of August 2026, as part of Christie’s summer exhibition series. Learn more here.

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