This Fall, Nita Ambani Is Bringing “a Slice of India” to New York City With a Cultural Extravaganza at Lincoln Center

When Nita Ambani was a young girl preparing for her arangetram—her solo debut as a Bharatnatyam dancer—she couldn’t find a theater her family could afford, and performed in a temple instead. “That was the time that the seeds of doing something for art and artisans took shape,” Ambani remembers.
Decades later, as the chairperson of the Reliance Foundation and wife of billionaire Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, she set out to do just that when she opened Mumbai’s Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in 2023. At the time, breathless write-ups dubbed the three-day launch festivities “India’s Met Gala.” Red-carpet arrivals at the threshold of the glittering new cultural institution included Zendaya, Shah Rukh Khan, Gigi Hadid, Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas, Alia Bhatt, and Emma Chamberlain, all decked out in finery that paid tribute to Indian craftsmanship.
The comparisons seemed apt, and perhaps by design: Ambani was inspired to establish the NMACC by her visits to storied cultural venues around the world, including The Met—where she was named honorary trustee in 2019. “After seeing Lincoln Center and Sydney Opera House with my children, I used to wonder why India couldn’t have a space like that,” says Ambani. “I was keen to create a space that could showcase our cultural heritage, whether through dance, drama, or music—even folklore, arts, and crafts.” It took her 10 years to bring this vision to life, complete with state-of-the-art performance spaces and visual arts galleries that have since hosted everything from the Broadway musicals Mamma Mia! and The Phantom of the Opera to kathak performances and Bengali concerts, and visual arts venues with installations by the likes of Yayoi Kusama, Andy Warhol, and Dan Flavin.
Ambani has been busy since debuting NMACC—who can forget the months-long $600 million extravaganza she hosted for her son Anant’s nuptials to Radhika Merchant last year, with its blinding array of jewels and couture and its constellation of global megastars? And she was in New York last month working to bring a taste of NMACC stateside this fall. From September 12 through 14, the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre Weekend in New York City will take over Lincoln Center with three days of dance, music, fashion, and more. “We want to look at how we can place Indian arts and artists at the front and center of the world’s creative imagination, and there’s no better place than Lincoln Center,” she said. “Culture binds people together; it builds empathy; it teaches you to respect differences, respect other cultures. I feel at this moment the world needs it more than ever before.”
Events will kick off with Grand Swagat, an invite-only welcome gala with a fashion show for Ambani’s handloom emporium, Swadesh, curated by celebrated designer Manish Malhotra—who himself recently made his Met Gala red-carpet debut—and cuisine by chef Vikas Khanna, who helms the East Village sensation Bungalow (scoring a reservation there might be even harder than landing an invite to the Grand Swagat). “NMACC is doing such an amazing job of making people understand India, and with her platform and her vision to bring India to the world, it’s absolutely an honor just to be a part of this,” Khanna said. His menu, currently a work in progress, is shaping up to be a deep dive into flavors from across India. “The amount of research I did, I can easily get another PhD for that,” he added with a laugh.

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