13 galleries · 0 museums · 3 places
Settled residential quarters west of the centre, where much of Abu Dhabi's commercial gallery scene lives — often in converted villas on quiet streets, some of them among the earliest private galleries in the emirate. Rooms sized like rooms, gardens instead of lobbies, and the pace of a neighbourhood rather than a destination.
No published museums in this district yet.
The coffee plant is Ethiopian. But the drink — roasted, brewed, and made the center of a culture — is Yemeni.
Before the espresso machine, before the café, a Sufi in Yemen brewed a bean to stay awake for God. This is the story of how coffee became coffee — from the prayer lodges of the Shadhili order to the Red Sea port of Mocha that named a drink, and finally to the shape the Gulf poured all of it into: the dallah on the one-dirham coin.
Seven kings, one for each day of the week. A portrait of Fever. Two spirits keeping a bathhouse warm. What the manuscripts actually show — and what the lamp replaced.
Folio 35v of a manuscript in Oxford shows the public baths at Tiberias in cutaway. Upstairs, people washing. Downstairs, two jinn tending the furnace, mid-conversation. It is not what most of the world expects — and it is much closer to what the unseen was actually understood to be for. A long read across twelve centuries of manuscripts, fieldwork, survey data and horror cinema.
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?
A deep look into the mid-century art movement that liberated the Arabic letter, fusing traditional script with modern abstraction.
The Hurufiyya movement stands as one of the most significant developments in twentieth-century Arab art. Discover how modernist pioneers deconstructed traditional Arabic calligraphy to assert a post-colonial cultural identity, and learn where to experience these works today using Exhibo.
A comprehensive guide to Saudi Arabia's desert art revolution, mapping the permanent and temporary masterworks of the AlUla oasis.
Discover how AlUla transformed from an ancient trade route into a leading destination for contemporary land art. Explore the curatorial vision behind Desert X 2026, the permanent monumentality of Wadi AlFann, and the upcoming Contemporary Art Museum partnered with Paris's Centre Pompidou.
The former NCMA chief returns to the capital to shape the Saadiyat Island venue's debut year and curatorial strategy
Valerie Hillings has been named the founding director of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, marking a significant leadership shift ahead of the island campus's December inauguration.
