Earlier this month, attendees of this 12 months’s Artwork Dubai truthful wandering the Madinat Jumeirah resort probably got here throughout a completely totally different window into the artwork of the area, the Dubai Assortment.
Billed because the emirate’s first institutional assortment of contemporary and modern artwork, the Dubai Assortment launched in 2021 underneath the patronage of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Dubai. The time period assortment is getting used loosely right here: there is no such thing as a brick-and-mortar establishment to go to, nor does it purchase work. As a substitute, it exists primarily as a digital platform the place Dubai’s prime collectors—together with Al Maktoum—record their holdings and a collection of exhibitions that provide curated glimpses into the over 1,000 artworks listed on the platform. (There are additionally analysis, schooling, and cultural preservation initiatives funded by the Assortment.)
At Artwork Dubai, the Assortment placed on its third such exhibition, “Widespread Grounds.” Organized by three Zayed College college students underneath the mentorship of established curators, the present brings collectively artworks created between 1949 and 2024 to thoughtfully discover themes of place, reminiscence, and identification.
However the exhibition raised extra questions than it solutions, particularly: What’s an institutional assortment that doesn’t maintain artworks, has no everlasting location, and exists primarily as a smooth on-line platform? Even in a metropolis is all the time trying in direction of the long run and which appears to worth flash over substance, the Dubai Assortment seems extra like a advertising idea than an everlasting cultural establishment.
That was the sense I bought from talking with Dubai-based collectors throughout Artwork Dubai. One such collector, who spoke on situation of anonymity, instructed ARTnews that the branding is deceptive. “The primary drawback is asking it ‘the Dubai Assortment,’” he mentioned. “The one factor the gathering has to do with Dubai is that every one the patrons dwell right here.”
One other collector and an early patron of the undertaking—additionally talking on situation of anonymity—instructed ARTnews that the Assortment must evolve. “The gathering has to maneuver past Center Japanese artwork,” the collector mentioned. “In the event that they wish to keep digital solely and forgo a bodily house, they should develop. And they should do extra exhibitions. They simply aren’t doing sufficient.”
Whereas a good portion of the Dubai Assortment’s listings concentrate on the UAE’s personal cultural growth—that includes figures like Hassan Sharif, Abdul Qader Al Rais, and Sarah Almehairi—there’s an unmistakable international bent, a reminder that Dubai sees itself as a world crossroads at first. About 20 p.c of the works come from outdoors the area, and practically 100 feminine artists are represented, signaling a minimum of a notional dedication to variety.
Serwan Baran’s Untitled from the Dubai Assortment on view on the “Widespread Grounds” exhibition at Artwork Dubai, 2025
Cedric Ribeiro/Spark Media for Artwork Dubai
The Dubai Assortment’s strategy stands in distinction to the town’s different main institutional presence, the Jameel Arts Centre, which opened in 2018 with a extra typical setup: a bodily constructing, a everlasting assortment, and a robust emphasis on public programming, schooling, and analysis. That establishment, based and funded by Artwork Jameel, positions itself as a regional hub for dialogue and creative manufacturing, with a transparent artist-centric mission. (Dubai has invested in different conventional museums too, should you can name the $136 million Museum of the Future, conventional.)
The place Jameel prioritizes commissioning new work and fostering an area inventive ecosystem, the Dubai Assortment leans extra closely on collaboration and spectacle. Except for non permanent exhibitions, the Assortment’s different main touchpoint with the general public is Dubai Assortment Nights, which had its third version in March throughout Ramadan. For the initiative, the Assortment held a collection of occasions like panels, artist studio visits, and excursions of patrons’ residences.
The Dubai Assortment’s mannequin is nimble, permitting patrons to contribute works whereas retaining authorized possession. Which will befit the town’s fast-moving, progress-at-all-costs picture, nevertheless it prevents the Assortment from being an precise cultural commons that may develop over time. And that’s what the town actually wants, one collector instructed me: a everlasting assortment that displays its identification—one thing extra akin to what the Whitney Museum of American Artwork represents for New York. A real Dubai assortment, in his view, would inform the story of the town itself, quite than merely reflecting the tastes of its residents.
The true take a look at of the Dubai Assortment probably lies much less in whether or not it might mount a extra sturdy exhibition calendar and whether or not it might discover some compromise between innovation and custom, between fast development and lasting roots. For now, the Dubai Assortment stands as an experiment in cultural ambition—a museum with out partitions, and a piece very a lot in progress.
