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Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies event image
The Museum of Modern Art, Midtown, Manhattan

Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies

The Indian painter's first solo show in New York - five decades of work on displacement, memory and Kashmir, co-organized with KNMA.

Wikimedia Commons image; CC BY-SA 2.0; attribution: Jason Persse; source page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Raincoats,_MUSEUM_OF_MODERN_ART,_New_York,_New_York,_20_November_2010.jpg

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Art

Sheikh has been painting for fifty years and has never had a solo show in this city - a gap that says more about American museums than about her work. Fractured Skies gathers the major cycles, including the Kashmir paintings, in the tempera-and-scroll idiom she built out of Indian miniature traditions rather than Western modernism. The new commission debuts here, which makes this the definitive version of the show.

What to expect

A multi-gallery survey of paintings and hanging scroll works spanning five decades, arranged around the artist's major bodies of work, with a newly commissioned site-responsive series making its debut. Work rewards slow looking - the layered pigment and text are easy to walk past. Included with MoMA admission along with the rest of the museum.

Good to know

  • This is the artist's first solo presentation in New York, despite a practice spanning five decades.
  • The exhibition is co-organized with the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi and includes a new KNMA-commissioned series.
  • It is included with MoMA admission; the museum offers free Friday evening hours through UNIQLO Free Friday Nights.
  • MoMA is at 11 West 53rd Street, closest to Fifth Av-53rd St on the E and M and 47-50 Sts-Rockefeller Ctr on the B, D, F and M.
  • The run is long - through June 2027 - so a crowded opening weekend is easy to avoid.
  • Timed-entry tickets are standard at MoMA; booking online avoids the lobby queue.

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Common questions

How long is the exhibition on view?

September 27, 2026 through June 13, 2027 at The Museum of Modern Art.

Has Nilima Sheikh shown in New York before?

Not in a solo presentation. MoMA describes Fractured Skies as the first solo showing of her work in New York.

Is there new work in it?

Yes. A new site-responsive set of paintings, commissioned by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, makes its debut in this exhibition.

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