Feminist stories, climate crisis depicted in South Asia Institute art

For Pakistani-American doctors Shireen and Afzal Ahmad, collecting South Asian art started as a hobby, a way to stay connected to their culture while adorning the walls of their Streeterville home.

They acquired their first work — an Ali Imam painting of a woman playing a sitar — on a trip to Karachi, Pakistan, in 1971. Since then, the couple has traveled to Nepal, India and Bangladesh, amassing around 1,000 works, Shireen Ahmad said.

“It was only when there were more works in storage than on our walls that we realized there was something bigger happening,” she said.

Ahmad said she and her husband had noticed that mainstream art museums rarely displayed works by South Asian artists. Rather than donating their collection, they wanted it to have a space of its own.

In 2015, the couple bo