Blog

Marrakech · Morocco

Why Marrakech Is Red and Fez Is Ochre

Two imperial cities, one element in the ground — and the difference between a red city and an ochre one turns out to be half geology, half planning law.

Marrakech shows you the iron in its earth; Fez veils the same iron under lime. What makes each city relentlessly one colour, though, isn't the ground — it's what the twentieth century did to it.

Beirut · Lebanon

Women of Arab Abstraction

The letter set loose, the line woven, the arabesque the West once threw away — and the women who built modern abstraction out of all three, then got written out of it.

Abstraction is usually told as a Western invention that arrived elsewhere late. Saloua Raouda Choucair, Etel Adnan, Madiha Umar and a room of others tell it differently — often as the only woman in the movement, building modern form from the geometry, craft and calligraphy their own culture already held.

Marrakech · Morocco

The Hand That Everyone Named After Their Own

The Khamsa across North Africa — Marrakech, Tunis, Algiers — and why the oldest thing about it is the shape, not the story.

Everyone calls it something different — the Hand of Fatima, the Hand of Miriam, the Hand of Mary. One five-fingered shape, several holy names, each written onto it by a community that made it its own. From a carved hand over the Alhambra's gate to Kabyle silver, synagogue lamps and a boy on a Marseille motorway, this is the story of a symbol older than the names it carries — and shared by more people than any one of them.

Cairo · Egypt

The Seal of Solomon: The Object That Grew Around One Word

The Qur'an never mentions a ring. What grew in that gap instead: a demon, a seal, seven signs nobody can trace, a thousand years of amulets, and a star that ended up on a flag.

A fisherman pulls up a copper jar stopped with lead, and the mark of a signet ring is pressed into the lead. Everyone hearing this in ninth-century Baghdad knew what came next — they knew it from the lid. The strange part is that the ring they all knew about is not in the Qur'an.

Marrakech · Morocco

Majorelle Blue: How a Painter (Almost) Trademarked a Colour

How a French painter lent his surname to a blue that Morocco had been dyeing, firing and painting for centuries — and what that tells us about who gets to own a colour.

Everyone repeats the same tidy line: a painter fell in love with Marrakech, invented an electric blue, and trademarked it. Almost every clause is a simplification. The colour was already deep in Morocco's visual language — in indigo, in the cobalt of Fez, in the blue of zellige — long before Jacques Majorelle poured it over a single studio wall. What he actually did was rarer and stranger: not invent a colour, but compose a place, and attach a name to a hue no one can truly own.

Sharjah · United Arab Emirates

The Night Is Not for Humans: Umm Al Duwais and the Women of Emirati Folklore

A village half-buried in sand an hour from Dubai, a name that means "she of the little sickle," and what Emirati sources actually say.

The houses at Al Madam went up around 1980 and stood empty by the mid-1990s. People will tell you she lives there — not in the old stories, though. That attachment is recent, and it is the interesting part.

Arts Administration as a Career

Development, finance, ops, marketing and HR across museums, festivals and foundations: the work, pay caveats and routes in

Arts administration jobs sit in development, finance, operations, marketing and HR across museums, festivals, foundations and arts non-profits. Here: what the work looks like week to week, how the field formed, entry routes including Goldsmiths and Columbia programmes, pay bands with sources, and UK and US regional variation.

Art Handling as a Career

Art handler careers mapped across museums, galleries, auction houses and logistics firms: skills, pay and progression

Art handlers pack, install and move objects for museums, galleries, auction houses and specialist shippers. This career guide covers daily work, physical demands, pay bands in the US and UK, entry routes, and how handlers progress into preparator, registrar or crew-lead roles without turning into a DIY packing tutorial.

How to Become an Art Dealer

Capital, inventory, fair booths and private sales: how to build a dealing practice without salary myths or shortcuts

Building a dealing practice means raising working capital, managing consigned and owned stock, surviving fair selection, and meeting ethics and resale-right duties. This guide maps those steps for people who already know gallery floors and want to trade under their own name, with costs and risks stated plainly.

Working in a Commercial Gallery

Front-of-house, sales support and the mid-level track inside dealer spaces: duties, pay ranges and how people get hired

A gallery assistant job is front-of-house and administration inside a commercial space that sells art. This guide maps the role ladder, day-to-day work, sourced salary bands in the UK and US, museum versus trade distinctions, and regional hiring patterns, without promising pay or teaching artists how to sell.

How to Become an Art Appraiser

USPAP, ASA, AAA and ISA ladders, plus comps libraries: the practical career route into professional art valuation work

Art appraisal is a standards-bound career built on market hours, report discipline and association credentials. This guide maps USPAP and IVS awareness, ASA, AAA and ISA membership routes, RICS for UK practice, specialisms, liability and how you assemble a usable comparable-sales library for paid work.

How to Become an Art Conservator

Science prerequisites, master’s programmes, internships and specialisms on the route from first degree to bench work

Art conservation trains you to examine, stabilise and treat cultural objects under ethical codes. The route runs through chemistry and studio prerequisites, competitive master’s places, and post-graduate fellowships. This guide maps UK and US programmes, specialisms, costs and when a technician or allied role fits better.