‘ArtReview’ recognises the Samdani team in their ‘2019 Power 100’ list

Photo: Courtesy

Nadia Samdani, the Director and Co-founder of Dhaka Art Summit (DAS), and Rajeeb Samdani, the Trustee and Co-founder of DAS, along with their curator, Diana Campbell Betancourt of the Samdani Art Foundation, have been recognised as 47th most influential people by the ‘ArtReview 2019 Power 100’s’ list of influential people in the contemporary art world, for their work in developing an art scene in Bangladesh.

This success tailed along 2018 Dhaka Art Summit, where 368,000 local attendees , and 1200 international visitors, including Alain Berset, the Former President of Switzerland, were in attendance throughout the Biennial.

The recognition will help build momentum of the upcoming 2020 Dhaka Art Summit which is to be held February, and aid the development of Srihatta, the Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture park. The park will have projects of world famous artists, including Adrián Villar Rojas, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Olafur Eliasson, Superflex, and Haroon Mirza along, among several other Bangladeshi artists.

ArtReview is an international contemporary art magazine based in London, and its much awaited annual power 100 issue highlights the most powerful figures. It is judged annually by individuals that play a role shaping the public perspective of art. Renowned personas, including Glenn D Lowry, Director of Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Banksy, Miuccia Prada, Yayoi Kusama, Bernard Arnaut, Founder of Louis Vuitton Foundation, and François Pinault, Founder of the Pinault Collection, are sharing the list this time with the Samdani Team.  

The Samdani team has been exhibiting several artworks from the 2018 Dhaka Art Summit travelled around the world. Meanwhile, the foundation collaborated with Alserkal Avenue to host a show exhibiting Bangladeshi, South Asian, and Southeast Asian artists in Dubai, which is to be curated by Betancourt. They are also working on a new research project connecting Southeast Asian and African art histories with the Getty Foundation in collaboration with Cornell University’s Institute for Comparative Modernities and the Asia Art Archive.

Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani were the first and only South Asians to receive the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage award in 2017. They are members of Tate’s International Council and Alserkal Avenue Programming Committee, Dubai. Alongside being the founding members of Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University’s Arts Advisory Council, USA, they are also the advisory council members of Art Dubai.

Rajeeb Samdani is the founding committee member and co-chair of the South Asian Acquisition Committee (SAAC) of Tate Museum United Kingdom. Nadia Samdani is in the Parasol Unit’s International Committee and Vice- President of Alliance Française de Dhaka. She has received a ‘Recognition of Merit’ award in the category of outstanding entrepreneur and innovator from the Rotary Club of Dhaka North, during their celebration of 50 Golden Years. Nadia has also received recognition as the “Most Inspiring Female in Promoting Art” at the 2018 Women in Leadership (WIL) Fest in Dhaka.