The art market needs a boost. It thinks the Middle East is the answer.

Mint

a day ago

Auction houses, dealers and advisers are betting on the Middle East to play an outsized role in the next art-market turnaround. Despite a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Iran and unstable pockets elsewhere in the region, the art world thinks it's time to capitalize on the Middle East as a major art destination.
Sotheby's conducted its first sale in Saudi Arabia a few months ago, after receiving an infusion of around $1 billion from Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund ADQ last year. Swiss art fair Art Basel is preparing to launch its next edition in Qatar, the tiny emirate that also recently landed a coveted spot to build a permanent national pavilion in the garden of the prestigious Venice Biennale. Private art-consulting firms are already cozying up to the region's sovereign families who have long championed and sometimes bankrolled various cultural festivals and institutions.
'Even though we're at a particular dark spot politically, the Gulf states are super dedicated to creating an arts sector in their economies, so we see real opportunity there," said Ed Dolman, a former chief executive of Christie's and Phillips auction houses who is eyeing the region's art-market potential.
The push comes as mainland China's economic volatility has largely compelled that country to slow down the pace of its frenzied museum-building boom that saw more than 1,500 new spaces open across the country between 2009 and 2014, according to the China Museums Association. Some of its billionaire collectors have similarly ended their shopping sprees, with private museums like the Long Museum even auctioning off some of its art holdings.
While art-related tourism across Asia Pacific hasn't disappeared entirely, topping $18 billion last year, according to California-based research firm Grand View Research, dealers say it's unclear if China will once again dominate the top end of the art market like it did before the pandemic. To fill the vacuum, art-world insiders are exploring alternative art hubs, including South Korea and the Middle East.
The Middle East is still confronting the continuing war between Israel and Gaza as well as juggling diplomatic tensions elsewhere, but the region is also well-funded by oil-rich states who are eager to assume the mantle of global cultural clout. For decades, several sovereign families across the Gulf have been building museums and extending arts education for its own while lobbying for local artists to get international attention. Art-related tourism in the Middle East and Africa surpassed $3 billion last year and is projected to reach $3.6 billion by decade's end, the Grand View firm said.
Dolman, who once advised the Qatari royal family, is the latest rainmaker to rejoin the art hunt in the Middle East, joining forces this week with several other auction veterans to launch an art-management consulting firm with the region's potential in mind. The firm, New Perspectives Art Partners, will cater to major art trusts and estates while also appealing to Gulf State sovereign families and collectors globally, Dolman said.
The others in the new firm include Philip Hoffman, a major art-backed lender and founder of the Fine Art Group; Brett Gorvy, a former Christie's executive and co-founder of gallery Lévy Gorvy Dayan; and Patti Wong, a former Sotheby's expert known for representing Asian billionaires.
Also joining is Dolman's son, Alex Dolman, a former auction specialist at Sotheby's and Phillips who said he's been cultivating ties to collectors in the Middle East privately for years.
He has identified a new generation of younger buyers in the region who want to support their favorite regional artists while also collecting internationally. 'Understanding what they want and having that local expertise matters," the younger Dolman said. (Each of the firm's partners will keep their day jobs but agree to work under the new firm's mantle on client-related projects.)
Looking ahead, more buyers—and artists—are expected to spring up across the Middle East as well as North Africa and India. Noah Horowitz, chief executive of Art Basel, said this week that he remains '100% committed" to launching Basel's next fair in Doha, Qatar, next February. 'We are leaning into a region where a huge amount of work has been done already, and we just want to accelerate the market there," he said.
Horowitz said Art Basel Qatar will start small, with around 50 galleries, and five galleries with ties to the region participated in its flagship fair last week in Switzerland. Art Basel gave its best emerging artist award last week to Mohammad Alfaraj, a multidisciplinary artist from eastern Saudi Arabia who makes poetic work using palm fronds and dates. Alfaraj currently has a show at Dubai's Jameel Arts Centre.
All of this is giving the region a watch-this-space atmosphere that's been largely missing as the market has endured a slump for the past two years. Market makers can seize on a new locale to scout and a new collector base to court. On Tuesday, Sotheby's held a major London summer sale, and it said a Middle Eastern collector won Yu Nishimura's 'Through the Snow," for $400,000, four times its high estimate.
Qatar, a cultural pioneer in the region, has already enlisted Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh to design its own permanent pavilion within the garden complex of the next Venice Biennale. Qatar is only the third nation in the past half-century after Australia and South Korea to be granted space in the Biennale's Giardini. The Biennale is the art-world equivalent of the Olympics.
'It's a clear sign of lasting intent," Horowitz added.
Write to Kelly Crow at [e-mail]