The Gulf art market is witnessing an influx of attention. The headlines are worth repeating: the inaugural editions of Art Basel Qatar and Frieze Abu Dhabi each launch this year and, as of last year, Sotheby’s is holding regular sales in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. European galleries including Colnaghi, Zidoun-Bossuyt, and Taymour Grahne Projects have all established branches in the Gulf, while new local galleries have sprung up in Dubai and Abu Dhabi among other places.

‘This is what we’ve been waiting for,’ says Kourosh Nouri, who opened the gallery Carbon 12 in Dubai 17 years ago. ‘The time and effort we and others have put in to showcase the artists from this region, and to build relationships with collectors, is at last paying off as the region emerges onto the world stage.’

Yet the market in the Gulf region remains more difficult to decode than elsewhere, in large part because it is in a state of flux. Many of the major buyers in the Gulf are institutions: In Qatar, Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa Bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani’s Qatar Museums is the largest collector. Through that major government entity, Qatar acquires for existing museums such as Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and the Fire Station, as well as forthcoming institutions, primarily the Art Mill Museum – which will showcase regional and international Modern and contemporary art when it opens in 2030.

In the UAE, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, scheduled to open later this year in the Saadiyat Cultural District, is a big buyer, as are other Abu Dhabi royal, governmental, and corporate entities, such as the sovereign wealth fund Mubadala. Further north, the Sharjah Art Foundation continues to play an important role in both collecting and commissioning, particularly for the Sharjah Biennial. Institutional acquisitions are driving the Saudi Arabian market, too, where they far outpace private activity. Under the Ministry of Culture, the country is building at least 16 new museums over the next 5 years (this figure changes and includes heritage and natural history museums as well as art museums).

From public investment to a sustainable art market

There is a sense, however, that the private market is the goal for long-term sustainability. In Qatar, part of the reason behind the hosting of Art Basel Qatar is to fire up the commercial sector, Qatar Museums’ Sheikha Reem Al Thani has told The Art Newspaper.

This consensus echoes a larger debate around top-down investment that dominated discussions in the UAE over the past 10 years, with a clearly felt need for more grassroots initiatives as well as institutional programming. To a large part, this has happened, with new spaces such as Bayt AlMamzar in Dubai and Rizq Art Initiative in Abu Dhabi, and larger independent organizations such as the Jameel Arts Centre or 421 consolidating their programs.

In Dubai, galleries that have opened over the past 5 years include NIKA Project Space, Efie Gallery, and JD Malat Gallery. Other new spaces reflect the changing demographics of the UAE within the upper echelons – two art professionals from Lithuania and Russia opened Dom Art Projects in Dubai in November.

Galleries are opening in Abu Dhabi as well, which for a long time had few commercial spaces beyond the stalwart Salwa Zeidan Gallery – notable among these are Iyad Qanazea Gallery and Iris Projects, the latter located in the redeveloped port area of MiZa. Overall, Abu Dhabi is growing both in terms of the number of its collectors and its profile, with private-equity shops opening there, and a sense of momentum that the city previously lacked.

In 2024, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ announced a USD 1 billion minority stake in Sotheby’s. Though they have no input on sales, ADQ now has three seats on the Sotheby’s board, out of nine altogether, and it is no coincidence that the auction house’s activity has increased in Abu Dhabi. Last December, Sotheby’s held the first cycle of auctions during its inaugural Collectors Week. All of these were luxury – jewelry, watches, cars – pointing to a key direction for the emirate.

Sotheby’s is also betting on Saudi Arabia. Its second sale in Riyadh is due to take place on January 31 and is pitched differently than in Abu Dhabi with a focus on Modern and contemporary art (with the exception of a small ancient statue from Yemen). This includes a mix of international stars (Pablo Picasso among them) and Saudi Modernists – a key category – with a lead lot being the painting Coffee Shop in Madina Road (1968) by Safeya Binzagr. The Jeddah artist was an important pioneer in Saudi art, but her estate will not sell any works, making her paintings and watercolors exceedingly difficult to come by.

‘It’s a very young demographic,’ says Edward Gibbs, Sotheby’s chairman of Middle East and India. ‘That’s partly a reflection of the fact that these are young countries. And for Sotheby’s, in focusing on Saudi, there’s a huge potential to tap into, not just the government programming, but also a deep pool of private wealth.’

That wealth has been there for a long time, though, in Saudi as much as in Qatar and the UAE. Christie’s and Sotheby’s both started their activity in the Gulf in the 2000s; as did most of the major Dubai galleries. Acquisitions for the major museums in Qatar and Abu Dhabi began around the same time, while Doha’s Museum of Islamic Art opened in 2008 and Mathaf 2 years later. The larger question is: why now?

‘The simple answer is evolution – the region is developing. Those who started first took some risks and faced some challenges and spearheaded the market and its development, whether it be artists, galleries, foundations or auction houses,’ says Mohammed Hafiz of Athr, the leading gallery in Saudi Arabia. ‘Others are now following when they feel the market is developing, growing and maturing.’

The rise in interest also reflects two intersecting motivations: the vast amount of public investment that is being devoted to the arts sector in Qatar by Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa Bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, in Saudi Arabia, under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030, and in Abu Dhabi by the current leadership. Equally important is the fact that the US and European art worlds appear to have finally woken up to the richness of the cultural production of the Middle East – motivated by a wider sentiment shift of cultural interest in the Global South.

‘It feels like 2006 again, when everything was just about to start,’ says Sunny Rahbar, the cofounder of Dubai’s The Third Line and a member of Art Basel Qatar’s selection committee. ‘But this feels more sustainable.’