Chair of the International Committee, MICAS

Waqas Wajahat is a collector, curator, and art dealer, who works closely with museums, artists, and artists’ estate to organise and produce exhibitions. He has built his reputation within the art world through an emphasis on connoisseurship and philanthropy. After studying at the University of Pennsylvania and the Barnes Foundation, he gained curatorial experience and expertise in post-war and contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Over the years, he has focused on legacy projects benefiting museums, artists, and artists’ estates. 

Recognising the ever-changing requirements of artists’ legacies and the ambitions of their estates and foundations, Waqas has been instrumental in developing relationships between the Estate of David Smith and Hauser & Wirth, as well as the Milton Avery Trust and Victoria Miro in London and Xavier Hufkens in Brussels. He has initiated and produced numerous museum exhibitions, including critical surveys and retrospectives on Milton Avery, Herbert Ferber, Neil Jenney, Alexis Rockman, Richard Pousette-Dart, James Prosek, Sean Scully, Donald Sultan, and John Walker. 

Waqas is deeply committed to supporting non-profit art institutions, in particular, the Barnes Foundation and the Norton Museum of Art in Florida, and remains involved with Menil’s Drawing Institute and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is a trustee at The Drawing Center in New York City and serves on collections and exhibitions committees at the Lowe Art Museum, the Barnes Foundation, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

His focus in collecting remains within post-war and contemporary art, with an emphasis on women artists, as well as Mughal and Rajput period paintings.

Courtesy of Waqas Wajahat.