A McKinsey Exec Built a 1,000-Piece Art Collection. Now He’s Selling
Kito de Boer, with his wife Jane, collected modern Indian art for years. Christie’s in New York will be auctioning off a portion of it this month.
Akbar Padamsee’s Paysage Urbain (1961).
Source: Christie's
Kito de Boer had been working at McKinsey for seven years when he moved to Delhi in 1992 to open up the company’s India office. “The reality of the job is that it’s pretty much all-consuming,” he says. “Or it risks becoming that. What is work—and what is not work—becomes quite blurred.”
And yet, together with his wife Jane, de Boer began to build a collection of modern Indian art that eventually surpassed 1,000 objects. It was a process that entailed criss-crossing the country to visit artists’ studios, private collectors’ homes, and far-flung galleries.