A new exhibition series at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, tells the story of Arabic art for the modern world. Here, Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi introduces works from the Barjeel Collection.
‘What interested me in Arab art was a sense of history, telling our story and sharing visual culture with the rest of the world,’ says Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, founder of the Barjeel Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates.
Set to continue until January 2017, a series of four chronological displays at London’s Whitechapel Gallery bring works from the Barjeel Art Foundation to Britain for the first time. Exhibitions will highlight rarely seen works by artists from Algeria, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere, telling the story of Arab art from the 1900s to the contemporary period. The project represents the broadest single overview of Arab art to be shown in the UK to date.
The Barjeel Art Foundation, which is based in the UAE, holds one of the most extensive collections of art from the region. This series of exhibitions at the Whitechapel features over 60 artists and 100 works of art from the collection.
This article was originally published in Christie’s Daily on September 18, 2015.