Exhibo

Unverified listing

This gallery profile was created by Exhibo from public information. It is not managed by the organisation yet — details may be incomplete or outdated.

The Majlis Gallery — gallery cover
Al Fahidi · Dubai

The Majlis Gallery

Claim this gallery
Follow

Curatorial Ethos

-

The Majlis Gallery is a commercial gallery in the Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood, housed in a traditional wind-tower villa with a courtyard, five exhibition rooms and a henna tree that has been growing there for decades. Originally founded in 1989 by British expat Alison Collins — who established it as the UAE's first commercial art gallery — the gallery continues under the Majlis name in the same historic location. The current programme represents a broad international and regional roster including Emirati artists Abdul Qader Al Rais, Khaled Al Sa'ai and Mona Al Khaja alongside painters and sculptors from the UK, South Africa, Iran and beyond, working primarily in painting, sculpture, ceramics and glass. One of the few gallery spaces in Dubai where the architecture is as much a reason to visit as the work on the walls.

Why this gallery matters

Exhibo editorial

Exhibo editorial

When Alison Collins arrived in Dubai in 1976, the city had a population of roughly 200,000 and Al Fahidi was a quiet neighbourhood of wind towers and coral-stone houses where her family kept a lion cub in the courtyard. Three years later, a travelling English painter named Julian Barrow knocked on her door asking to show his work. She moved the furniture into the garden and sent handwritten invitations. The exhibition sold out. That's how the first commercial art gallery in the UAE came into being — not from a business plan, but from a soiree. The Majlis Gallery operated for forty years in that same wind-tower house, through the transformation of Dubai from trading port to global city, before Collins closed it in October 2020 on her own terms. She died in December 2021. The gallery that exists now under the same name in the same Al Fahidi address is a new chapter — same henna tree in the courtyard, same traditional architecture, different story. The artists are serious: Abdul Qader Al Rais, Khaled Al Sa'ai, Mona Al Khaja alongside international painters and sculptors across five gallery rooms. The spirit of the original — art as meeting place, gallery as living room — reads through the building itself, which was always the point.

Visit

Hours, directions, and direct contact. For programme or press enquiries, use the contact form below.

Address

Al Fahidi St, Bastakiya, Bur Dubai

Artists & People

Full directory →

Partners

Institutional partners, collaborators, and allied organisations.

Alison Collins

Alison Collins

Partner

Alison Collins arrived in Dubai in March 1976 in a rainstorm, with no one waiting for her at the airport. She was coming to work as an interior designer. She stayed for the rest of her life. Two years after arriving she moved her family into a wind-tower villa in what was then called Bastakiya — a quiet neighbourhood of coral-stone houses near the Creek, home to perhaps 2,000 expatriates in the entire city. In 1979, a travelling English painter named Julian Barrow knocked on her door. She moved the furniture into the garden, sent handwritten invitations and held an exhibition that sold out. That was the beginning. For the next decade she hosted informal soirees in the family majlis while raising three children under the henna tree in the courtyard. When the neighbourhood faced redevelopment in 1988 and the family received an eviction notice, her young son climbed into her lap and told her: "Mummy, you must not let that old house die." They returned within a year. In 1989, Collins formally established The Majlis Gallery as a commercial venture alongside her partner Cheeni Shah — the first fine art gallery in the UAE. Over the next thirty years the gallery introduced some of the region's most significant artists to the international stage, established an Artists in Residence programme that hosted thirty artists, and became what Collins had always intended it to be: a meeting place. Not a white cube. Not a commercial operation in the conventional sense. A living room with paintings on the walls and the door always open. "We just opened the doors and had a soiree," she recalled. "People came because it was a very sociable thing." She closed the gallery in October 2020, on her own terms, with no regrets. She died in Sicily in December 2021, aged 79.