Art Fairs Set to Compete for Mumbai
By HG Masters
Installation view of Gallery Ise’s booth at the Mumbai Art Fair, 2023. Courtesy Mumbai Art Fair.
Can India’s financial capital accommodate two midsized art fairs? What if they take place at the same time? Will this bring synergy and added excitement to the city’s cultural scene? Or will it overstretch and divide galleries and collectors alike, just as the art scene is coming into its own?
Those are questions for 2025. This year, the second edition of Art Mumbai is ready to host more than 70 galleries from November 14–17 at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse grounds. Jumping into the limelight this week, the New Delhi-based India Art Fair announced it will launch a new event next year in Mumbai, dubbed India Art Fair Contemporary (IAFC), with up to 70 galleries and design studios, slated for November 13–16, 2025.
The prospect of two art fairs happening in the same week of November 2025, in locations more than 10 kilometers apart, may force galleries to choose which fair to join, while the city’s art collectors might be divided in their attention and spending. Many leading galleries are already clients of India Art Fair in New Delhi, which for more than 15 years has been India’s prime commercial showcase. With the inclusion of design studios alongside art galleries, however, the future IAFC may be looking to attract a wider audience by showcasing more collectable luxury items. The IAFC will also prioritize “ultra-contemporary” artists and have a “curatorial focus” on South Asia, Africa, and South America.
Aparajita Jain, executive director at Nature Morte gallery, emphasized IAFC’s potential to reach new generations of buyers: “India’s art market is going to continue to expand with an increasingly engaged young collecting base, who are always looking for new ideas in art.”
As a rivalry looms, Art Mumbai’s 2024 edition will be a test of its abilities to secure collectors’ interest and loyalty. The fair has expanded on its debut, growing from 53 to 74 participants, including veteran dealerships such as New Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, Nature Morte, Experimenter from Kolkata, and Mumbai’s own emerging artist-focused Tarq gallery. This year the fair recruited nine international galleries including the Italian-headquartered Galleria Continua, London-based Ben Brown Fine Arts, Aicon Contemporary from New York, and Rossi & Rossi gallery in Hong Kong. The sophomore fair is also launching a speaker series and a display of outdoor sculptures.
Art Mumbai was co-founded in 2023 by Minal Vazirani and Dinesh Vazirani, who are also the co-founders of India’s Saffronart auction house, with two additional co-founders: Nakul Dev Chawla of New Delhi-based Chawla Art Gallery and Conor Macklin, the owner and director of London-based Grosvenor Gallery.
India Art Fair Contemporary is owned by Angus Montgomery Arts (AMA), which operates 12 international art events from Art SG to Taipei Dangdai, Art Central in Hong Kong, Tokyo Gendai, and Sydney Contemporary. Its new fair will be led by the India Art Fair’s director, Jaya Asokan, with a Mumbai-based team.
The art market has been on the upswing in Mumbai. The megacity of 21.6 million people has already seen a recent surge in new and expanding local galleries, along with leading art spaces from elsewhere in India opening Mumbai venues, such as Experimenter of Kolkata, which arrived in mid-2022, and New Delhi’s Nature Morte, which debuted its new gallery in the Colaba district in January 2024. While the convergence of two fairs is more than a year away, the Mumbai art scene will likely still need more time to grow diverse enough to support one, much less two, new art fairs.
HG Masters is deputy editor and publisher at ArtAsiaPacific.
