In his art collecting, Al-Qassemi breaks with traditional Arab secrecy about private possessions by displaying his art to the public, and listing and illustrating everything on the Barjeel Art Foundation website. Currently he is also lending works from his collection to the UAE pavilion for the Venice Biennale and to the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto in an exhibition about immigration and displacement.
Art Sales: an Arab autumn begins
A new exhibition of Arab art in London aims to combat negative stereotypes by sharing the Middle East’s artistic heritage with the rest of the world
By Colin Gleadell
September 08, 2015 16:12
The most extensive display of modern and contemporary Arab art ever staged in Britain, possibly in the West, begins at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London today, and runs, chronologically in four successive parts, until January 2017. All 100 works in this marathon exhibition hail from one privately owned collection in the Gulf which has a mission in these troubled times to share the beauty of Arab art with the world.
The Sharjah-based Barjeel Art Foundation Collection, which numbers over 1,200 works by artists from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea dating from 1900 to the present day, has been built by Sheikh Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi, commonly described as a journalist and commentator on Arab affairs but who also belongs to the ruling family in Sharjah and is chairman of a successful investment company.
In 2011, when he achieved some notoriety spreading up-to-date news on the events of the Arab Spring through his Twitter account, Forbes estimated his wealth at $1.2 billion. He now has 372,000 followers on Twitter and still adheres to the ideals of the Arab Spring. Last week, in an article for the International Business Times, he called on the Gulf States to open their doors to Syrian refugees.
… The final episode of this exhibition, next summer, will close with two ceramic doves inscribed with messages of freedom by the female Saudi artist, Manal al Dowayan. The work relates to a much larger installation of 200 porcelain doves (image above) by Dowayan that sold at Sotheby’s in Doha last year for an impressive $329,000 to the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar. By then, one hopes, a measure of peace will have been restored to the Middle East.
Al-Qassemi’s Sharjah based Barjeel Art Foundation contemporary art collection on exhibit and showcasing work by Arab artists at Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum.
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