WAQAS WAJAHAT is a collector, collaborator, and entrepreneur who built his reputation within the art world with essential partnerships with key institutions and a keen emphasis on connoisseurship and philanthropy. After studying at the University of Pennsylvania and the Barnes Foundation, he gained curatorial experience and expertise in Post-War and Contemporary Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Over the years, while devoted to collecting and producing museum exhibitions, he has simultaneously remained focused on legacy projects—advising museums, family foundations, and artists’ estates. 

Recognizing the ever-changing requirements of artists’ legacies and the ambitions of their estates and foundations, he has been instrumental in initiating, developing, and sustaining relationships between the Estate of David Smith and Hauser & Wirth, as well as the Milton Avery Trust and Victoria Miro in London and Xavier Hufkens in Brussels. He has been pivotal in organizing and producing numerous museum exhibitions, including critical surveys and retrospectives on Milton Avery, Herbert Ferber, Thomas Houseago, Alexis Rockman, Richard Pousette-Dart, James Prosek, Sean Scully, Donald Sultan, and John Walker.

Waqas Wajahat is deeply committed to supporting non-profit art institutions, notably the Barnes Foundation, the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is a trustee at The Drawing Center in New York City and serves on collections committees at the Lowe Art Museum in Coral Gables, Florida, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He has, in the past, supported the Hirschhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and continues to be involved with the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond. 

His personal focus on collecting remains within Post-War and Contemporary Art with an emphasis on women artists, a strong interest in mid-century Scandinavian design, and a commitment to Indian Mughal and Rajput period paintings.