Nadia Samdani

Nadia Samdani MBE (née Khalil Choudhury) is a British born Bangladeshi businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist. She is involved in developing platforms for art and culture in Bangladesh.^[1] Along with her husband Rajeeb Samdani, she is the co-founder of Samdani Art Foundation and its headline event the Dhaka Art Summit, which she also leads as its director.^[2][3] She serves as the Vice President of the Alliance Française de Dhaka.^[4]

Nadia Samdani MBE
নাদিয়া সামদানি
Samdani in 2017
Nationality	British-Bangladeshi
Other names	Nadia Khalil Choudhury
Occupation(s)	Art collector, businessperson
Spouse	Rajeeb Samdani

In 2022, Samdani was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in Queen's Birthday Honours for services to global art philanthropy and supporting the arts in South Asia and the UK.^[5] In 2023, she was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters) by the French government.^[6]

Background

Samdani's family moved to Dhaka from the UK in the late 1980s.^[7]

Career

Nadia is a founding committee member of Tate's South Asian Acquisition Committee and is also a member of Tate's International Council.^[8] She is a founding member of the Harvard University Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute's Arts Advisory Council and a member of the Alserkal Avenue Programming Committee in Dubai and also serves on the advisory council of the art fair Art Dubai.^[9][10][4] She presented the work of the foundation at museums and art fairs such as the Royal Ontario Museum, Art Basel, and Frieze Art Fair.^{[11][12][13][14][15][16]}

Her art collection has been recognized since 2015 on the Artnews Top 200 collectors listing^[17] – one of the sole South Asian collections to receive this recognition.^[18][19] The Samdani collection is featured in international news publications including Hong Kong Tatler.^[20]

Business

Samdani is director of Golden Harvest Group, a conglomerate in Bangladesh active in information technology, commodities, logistics, food processing, agriculture, dairy, aviation, insurance, banking, infrastructure development and real estate. She is the chairperson of Braintrain Studio, a subsidiary of Golden Harvest which is active in architecture and interior design consultancy in Bangladesh. She is also a director of the Khalil Group.^[21]

Honours, awards and recognition

• Knight of the Order of the Arts and Letters (2023)^[22]
• Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) (2022)^[23]
• “Woman of Inspiration Award” by the Bangladesh chapter of Junior Chamber International (JCI) (2020)^[24]
• “Women of the Decade in Arts Leadership” by the Women Economic Forum (2018)^[25]
• Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage award by Montblanc Cultural Foundation (2017)^[26]
• 2015 to 2020 Top 200 collectors listing bby ARTnews (2015–2020)^[17]