Among the few who lingered were three tourists from Britain. “It’s the most beautiful art I have ever seen in an airport,” said Judith Wolfram, who had lived in India for seven years as a young woman and had returned for a two-week visit with her daughter and daughter’s boyfriend. Ms. Wolfram was so impressed by the airport’s all-India art collection that when their flight was delayed, she decided to give the younger generation a quick tour of Indian art history.

Sanjay Reddy, the vice chairman of GVK, the family-led conglomerate that built the museum and terminal and has managed them since they opened five years ago, said he knew it would be a challenge to create an art museum in a place where people are always in transit. But he said he had wanted to do it anyway to introduce the country’s artistic heritage to Indians.

“Even if we are able to catch one out of 100 people, we have done our job,” said Mr. Reddy, who hired the Delhi artist Rajeev Sethi to select and arrange the works. “A lot of this is subconscious. When you go through any place, it becomes a part of you.”

Indeed, art and architecture go together in the terminal, which has 4.7 million square feet of built-up space, more than double the footprint of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The airport’s check-in hall, for example, is covered by a giant canopy in the shape of a peacock’s tail, with skylights to let in natural light and small nooks where passengers can sit before going through security.