Inside one of the Gulf's first dedicated art museums, the Western Orientalist pictures that once framed the East hang under the collection of the ruler who spent his life writing back against them
In one Sharjah gallery hang the Western pictures that once framed the East — assembled by the ruler who spent his life contesting them. A long read on who controls the image of a place.
The dazzling white of Gulf cities looks like simple physics — sunlight, reflected. The real story runs through coral, lime, faith, oil and the way traditions acquire their reasons after the fact.
Everyone knows why Gulf cities are white: white reflects the sun. It isn't wrong — it's just one strand of a much thicker rope. Follow it back through coral walls and lime skins, a sustainability code that never mentions colour, and a desert that was never really dark and the tidy explanation starts to look like something we tell ourselves afterward.
Ninety minutes from Dubai, a mountain town where the same water has shaped human settlement for four thousand years.
Most guides to Hatta list its fort, its dam and its trails. This is the valley told differently — through the single physical problem that has shaped every era of its life. From Bronze Age tombs sited by the water to a mosque timed by shadow to a hydro plant that answers Dubai in ninety seconds, one question runs through four thousand years: where does the water go, and whose turn is it?
What the world's most famous building stunt tells you about everything it was filmed on
A film crew drilled into the world's tallest building to hang a man off the side of it. Behind that decision sits wind physics, a hundred-year-old cooling technology, a height race Dubai has quietly stepped away from, and an art scene older than the tower.
From a four-storey waterfall of pearl divers to a real 155-million-year-old dinosaur — a guide to every permanent artwork inside the world's most visited building.
Every permanent sculpture, kinetic installation and immersive district in the mall — who made them, what they mean and how to see them all in two hours.
How the Liwa desert — the Empty Quarter's northern edge, and the real Arrakis — became one of the most filmed, least understood landscapes on Earth.
Denis Villeneuve filmed Dune in Liwa, on the rim of the Rub' al Khali — the largest sand sea on the planet. A desert that has been an ocean, birthed a nation, and is only now being discovered as a subject for art.
Dubai's landmark institution will run its present galleries until mid-September before beginning work on a new generation of experiences, shaped by over 1,000 public submissions and timed to its fifth anniversary.
Dubai's Museum of the Future has confirmed that its current exhibitions will remain open to visitors until mid-September 2026, after which the institution will close for redevelopment ahead of a new generation of experiences due in the first quarter of 2027 — timed to mark its fifth anniversary.
This year's projection design competition drops the AED 100,000 cash prize of 2025 in favour of a longer, fully global submission window — and rules out any AI-generated entries.
Emaar has reopened its Burj Khalifa Open Call, inviting artists, designers and creatives from the UAE and around the world to submit original audio-visual projections for a chance to see their work displayed on the facade of the world's tallest building. Submissions close on 18 August 2026.
The second edition of the emirate-wide public art event opens in Al Ain in October and Abu Dhabi in November, led by former MACBA director Elvira Dyangani Ose under the theme "Home: A Glossary for a Communal Sense of Place."
The second edition of the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial opens in Al Ain on 23 October 2026 and in the capital on 15 November, running into February 2027. Curated by former MACBA director Elvira Dyangani Ose under the theme "Home: A Glossary for a Communal Sense of Place," the free, citywide programme builds on the acclaimed inaugural edition, several of whose works have since become permanent public installations.
At 421 Arts Campus, Emirati robotics engineer Dr Ahmad AlAttar turns the gallery into a field of sound and strings you have to play — his first institutional solo show, on until 13 September.
A field of coloured ropes hangs from the ceiling at 421 Arts Campus, each one wired to respond to touch with sound. Human in the Loop, the first institutional solo show by Emirati robotics engineer and artist Dr Ahmad AlAttar, turns the gallery into a game of hide-and-seek with an unseen algorithm — on until 13 September.
From a Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim on Saadiyat Island to a floating art museum on Dubai Creek, six major institutions are set to redraw the country's cultural map over the coming years.
The UAE's museum and performing arts landscape is entering one of its most ambitious build-out phases yet, with six major cultural institutions — spanning Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah — currently in development. From the long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to a floating art museum on Dubai Creek, here is what is coming and when.
Chairman Mohammad Abdullah Al Gergawi says transformative ideas "may come from anyone, anywhere in the world" as Dubai's landmark institution invites public submissions for its next generation of experiences.
Dubai's Museum of the Future has launched an international open call inviting residents of the UAE and the public worldwide to submit ideas for its next generation of exhibitions, timed to coincide with the institution's approaching fifth anniversary.
