On this occasion of Women's History Month, the Atropos family is celebrating all the women who have played a very important role in shaping our nation. We salute these women for being the writer of their fate and inspiring others to do the same.
We start our journey with Nadia Samdani, a British-born Bangladeshi businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist, internationally recognized for her visionary leadership in developing platforms for art and culture in Bangladesh. Nadia is one of the leading role models who has been connecting the bridge of the vast world to our little-known country full of beautiful culture by spreading our arts to this date. Her passion to present our unique Bangladesh has helped us to shine brighter in this world of competition. She is the co-founder of Samdani Art Foundation and its headline event the Dhaka Art Summit, which she also leads as its director. She serves as the Vice President of the Alliance Française de Dhaka.
Nadia says “When my husband and I started together we traveled all over the world to learn and discover about other cultures, art scenes, and meet people. And people didn’t know about the Bangladeshi art scene at all. Here it is everything very local and we went on the mission to help develop the fantastic art heritage and culture and promote it abroad”. She collects both Bangladeshi and international art, reflecting her experience as both a proud Bangladeshi and a global citizen. She has written about collecting for Art Asia Pacific and Live Mint and has been a guest speaker at art fairs and institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, and Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Works from the Samdanis’ collection have been lent to institutions and festivals including Tate, London (2019); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019); Para Site, Hong Kong (2018). She is one of the founding members of The Harvard University Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute’s Arts Advisory Council. In 2017, with her husband Rajeeb, she was the first South Asian arts patron to receive the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award.
