The Mumbai collector building the city a blue-chip art space

5 min read Kelly Crow 04 Mar 2023, 10:27 PM IST

Isha Ambani Piramal is launching a flexible not ‘fancy’ Art House within her family’s new Mumbai cultural complex

Isha Ambani Piramal at home, with a work by Subodh Gupta. “We want museums to send their works to us and breathe easy,” she says. (WSJ) — Isha Ambani Piramal at home, with a work by Subodh Gupta. “We want museums to send their works to us and breathe easy,” she says. **(WSJ)**

Isha Ambani Piramal recently spent hours trying to borrow a car-size sculpture of a whale’s heart. She hoped to include the bindi-covered piece by Bharti Kher, An Absence of Assignable Cause, in the inaugural exhibit of her family’s new kunsthalle-style space in Mumbai, Art House. Yet with the show opening to the public April 2 and some shipping details still to be sorted, the Yale- and Stanford-educated director of India’s largest retailer, Reliance Retail, was learning firsthand the logistical travails of a museum director seeking to turn vision into reality.