Hedge Fund Manager Sets Record For Contemporary Indian Art Sale

Filed in archive Op-Ed on February 21, 2007

Here is an article just barely connected to hedge funds, but I found it interesting in it's connection to art, investments and emerging markets.

For the first time a contemporary Indian painting has crossed the million-dollar mark, and it was a hedge fund manager who bought it.

"Rajiv Chaudhri, a New York-based Indian hedge-fund manager who stunned a crowd at Christie's in late 2005, by paying $1.6m for a painting by the 80-year-old Indian artist Tyeb Mehta. The work, Mahisasura, a 1997 rendering of the buffalo-demon of Hindu mythology"

The new price range has a lot to do with second generation Indians who were born abroad, rediscovering their heritage through the internet. A number of online auctions have connected once-obscure artists with a hungry audience. The website is here.

More than $500m is expected to flow into the market when the half-dozen private museums currently being built by India's new elite start collecting art.