Biography
Manjari Sihare Sutin serves as Co-Worldwide Head of Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art, a position she has held since 2024. She joined Sotheby’s in 2015, becoming the principal contributor to the South Asian Art department in 2017, Head of Sale for New York the following year, and Head of Department for the Americas in 2021.
Manjari works extensively with both private and institutional clients globally, and under her leadership, South Asian art at Sotheby’s has seen the highest ever totals in its 30-year history, and, in autumn 2024, was the top performing auction house in this category with over a quarter of market share. She also oversees the category’s major New York auctions, held during Asia Week, where world records in the genre are consistently created and top-tier research is conducted. The Modern and Contemporary South Asian sales of March 2024 achieved a combined $20 million, the highest-ever total in a single season for the department at Sotheby’s since its inception in 1995.
Manjari’s sales are comprehensive explorations of art from the region, bringing both known and fresh artists to market with exceptional results. From March 2022 to March 2025, the department achieved a total of 84 world auction records for artists such as MF Husain, SH Raza, Ganesh Pyne, Jehangir Sabavala, K.C.S. Paniker, Madhvi Parekh, Zainul Abedin, Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar, Manjit Bawa and Rabindranath Tagore. Between 2023 and 2025 alone, Manjari brought three record-making works of Indian art to market in New York: Maqbool Fida Husain’s iconic Bulls (1961) to market, where it achieved $2.8 million – the world auction record for the artist at the time. The following year, Sayed Haider Raza’s monumental landscape Kalliste (1959) netted $5.6 million, becoming the most expensive artwork sold in the category at Sotheby’s and the world auction record for the artist. This success was followed by the 2025 sale of Jagdish Swaminathan’s Homage to Solzhenitsyn, which, at $4.7 million, nearly quintupled the artist’s previous auction record.
She has also played a pivotal role in bringing major American Collections of South Asian art to the market, including the Collection of Marcia Gilmartin, Robert and Ruth Marshak, the Estate of His Excellency Jamsheed K. Marker and Diana J. Marker and the Virginia and Ravi Akhoury Collection, amongst others.
Prior to joining Sotheby’s, Manjari was Curatorial Manager at the Queens Museum and organized key shows of artists Pedro Reyes and Andy Warhol as well as Cuban, Tibetan and Indian Contemporary Art. She is regularly covered in the press including the Times of India, ARTnews, Artsy, Mint, New Indian Express, The Financial Times and The Art Newspaper. Sihare Sutin holds two graduate degrees – in art history from the National Museum Institute, New Delhi and Visual Arts Administration from New York University, New York.
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