Rajeeb Samdani

Rajeeb Samdani (born 28 March 1974) is a Bangladeshi industrialist and art collector. He is currently the managing director of Golden Harvest Group, a leading Bangladeshi conglomerate, and the founder and trustee of Samdani Art Foundation which produces the Dhaka Art Summit. He is the founding committee member and co-chair of the Tate Museum, United Kingdom, South Asian Acquisition Committee.

Rajeeb Samdani is the managing director of Golden Harvest Group, a leading Bangladeshi conglomerate. He started his career as a commodity broker with Stemcor. Over the years, his company, Golden Harvest, expanded its business into information technology, commodities, logistics, food processing, agriculture, dairy, aviation, insurance, banking, infrastructure development and real estate. He is also the chairman of Dubai-based financial institution Gulf International Finance Limited. Golden Harvest has expanded business into the logistics industry with its Japanese partner Nippon Express, the largest logistic company in Asia and the fourth largest logistic company in the world. In partnership with Jubilant FoodWorks Limited, Golden Harvest has launched the francise of Domino’s Pizza in Bangladesh in 2019. Golden Harvest has signed a joint venture agreement with International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, in 2019 to set up country’s first cold chain network. Rajeeb first began collecting contemporary art with his wife Nadia Samdani, with whom he established the Samdani Art Foundation in 2011. He is also the trustee and secretary general of the Bangladesh Human Rights Foundation. A permanent home for the collection is currently in development: Srihatta – Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park will open in 2021, designed by Dhaka-based, Aga Khan Award for Architecture-winning architect, Kashef Mahboob Chowdhury. Located in Sylhet, Bangladesh, Srihatta will house the Samdani Art Foundation Collection, accommodate space for up to ten artists in residence, and commission new works by world-class South Asian and international artists. Opening up new possibilities for art and community engagement in rural Bangladesh and raising standards for the public accessibility of institutions in South Asia, the first project realised on this site is Rokeya – an interactive sculpture created in collaboration with the local community by leading Polish artist Pawe? Althamer in early 2017. Awards Rajeeb Samdani is well known for his local and international art collection. Artworks from their collection have travelled to major exhibitions, such as documenta 14 (2017); Shanghai Biennale (2017); Office for Contemporary Art, Norway (2016); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Kunstsammlung Nordhrhein, Düsseldorf (2016); Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2014); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2014). Samdani and his wife were the first and only South Asians to receive the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage award in 2017 and were recognized on the Top 200 Collectors list by Artnews from 2015–2019, the Power 100 list in 2015-2019 by Art Review and The World’s Top 100 Art Collectors 2016 by ArtNet News. He was invited to speak at leading institutions including the Royal Ontario Museum of Art, UC Berkeley, Harvard University and the Private Museums Summit.

His vision can be found in a recent interview by Dinis Guarda. “We want to do something meaningful for the Bangladesh art scene and the people working on it. That is why we started our foundation and started collecting art and displaying it on exhibitions, partnering with local artists from different art movements and promoting the incredible art produced in Bangladesh all over the world”. “In the last ten years, things have changed in Bangladesh. Digital transformation is starting to take off, the government has bet high on technology and leveraging ICT technologies across the country with most of the citizens now having access to internet, smartphones, etc. So I think we are on the right track. Education has also been boosted in the last few years, and now over half a million students graduate every year from our universities. There is a growing awareness worldwide of the potential of Bangladesh, the challenge is to keep up with the good work done”.