In recent years, the cultural strategy of the United Arab Emirates has seen it become a key player in the international arts scene, with its capital boasting institutions like the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Bassam Freiha Foundation. Abu Dhabi has fostered a burgeoning market for contemporary works, as evidenced each year by the growing success of events like Abu Dhabi Art, the annual art fair which ran from the 20th to the 24th November at Manarat Al Saadiyat. Through initiatives like ‘Beyond: Emerging Artists’, the fair has become known for bringing local artists to the world stage, and thus excelling the cultural identity of a region that has been historically underrepresented in the art world.
This year, Abu Dhabi Art expanded with the birth of a new section called the Collector’s Salon, which features antiquarian works for the first time, ranging from manuscripts and astrolabes to armour and rare books. The section not only broadened the fair’s offering but also foregrounded the oft-neglected cultural history of the Middle East through documents and artefacts that have long gone unseen. Objects in the Collector’s Salon included a 13th-century Qur’an Folio in Maghribi script, and Ottoman Sultan Selim III’s ceremonial silver saddlery, both presented by the London-based dealership Kent Antiques.
Archive
At the stand of Daniel Crouch Rare Books – a gallery specialising in maps, atlases, and historical ephemera – visitors were presented with the Asala Collection, an archive of over 33,000 photographs that document the rapid growth of the United Arab Emirates, Saudia Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, and the Holy Land from 1860 to 1960. Composed of over 350 albums, loose images, and glass slides of vernacular photography, the majority of the images are both unique and personal, having been taken by individuals who were eyewitnesses to historical events and everyday life.
Anonymous, Son of the Sheikh of Dubai, on board HMS Effingham, December 1930. Courtesy Daniel Crouch Rare Books.
Curated over the course of twenty years, this private collection presents an intimate portrait of the formation of the modern Middle East, recording the effects of some of the most significant events of a tumultuous century, including the Anti-British uprisings in Iraq and Egypt, both World Wars, the Ikhwan revolt, the establishment of Israel, the coronation of King Faisal in Iraq, the Suez Crisis, Transjordan, and the end of mandates in Syria and Palestine. Included in the presentation are also a number of rare, glass autochromes of Egypt and Jordan from Albert Kahn’s Archive of the Planet series, which represent the very first colour photographs of the Middle East, and thereby the first visceral documentation of a region defined by its russet and ochre landscape.
Influence
The Asala Collection also includes previously unknown portraits of the most influential principles in the arena – Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, King Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Sultan Taimur bin Faisal bin Turki Al Said of Oman, Sheikh Salim al-Mubarak al-Sabah of Kuwait, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), and Gertrude Bell – all against a backdrop of royal palaces and empty deserts.
Captain Maxwell H. Coote, Winston Churchill, Sir Herbert Samuel, Sir Ronald Storrs in British Cemetery, Jerusalem, 1921. Courtesy Daniel Crouch Rare Books
A particularly intriguing photograph shows future prime minister Winston Churchill visiting the British Military Cemetery in Jerusalem in 1921, accompanied by Sir Herbert Samuel and Sir Richard Storrs. The image was captured by Captain Maxwell Coote, a Royal Air Force officer who served as Churchill’s aide-de-camp and documented his time in the Middle East diligently, with both diary and camera.
The presentation of such collections at fairs in the United Arab Emirates demonstrates that as its art landscape moves forward, it is also beginning to look backward; certainly, the inaugural Collector’s Salon at Abu Dhabi Art this year signalled that the market is continuing to expand, with the past proving just as pertinent as the present.
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