Published: January 9, 2009
On November 22, Qatar opened its Museum of Islamic Art, in a stunning building designed by I.M. Pei. It was the latest salvo in the multi-billion-dollar competition for the title of cultural capital of the Gulf.
The Gulf states began to compete for the title about a decade ago. The competition began in earnest in Qatar where the then minister of culture, the energetic Sheikh Saud Al Thani, developed a vision for a complex of museums in Doha that would see the Qatari capital become a cultural hub.
As a cousin of the ruler of Qatar he seemed impregnable and his budget was legendary. He acquired great art of a wide variety from Roman antiquities to Islamic art to masterpieces from the Italian renaissance becoming both the principal threat to British museums’ quest to keep great art in Britain and the single most important client in the art world. But Saud Al Thani’s vision for Doha became mired in accusations of venality and he was toppled from his position by the Emir and even for a while imprisoned. The level of his vision did not survive his tenure.
Subsequently the eyes of the world have been focussed on the UAE, by Dubai with its futuristic vision for the city and by Abu Dhabi with its awesome US$27bn development of Saadiyat Island including a series of partnerships with western powerhouse museums, including a planned Guggenheim museum.
Impressed by the impact of the Guggenheim Bilbao, as both a symbol of regeneration and a magnet for tourism Abu Dhabi is following the Bilbao model closely. The project is run by Thomas Krens, the former Guggenheim director, and the building is designed by Frank Gehry who created the iconic building at Bilbao.
Krens describes it as “Pharonic”. Yet in an even more dramatic and visionary move Abu Dhabi has forged a partnership with the Louvre. Perhaps the greatest museum in the world, this deal alone is powerfully backed by a financial commitment which will ultimately be measured in the billions of dollars.
At stake is not only pride but a way of leveraging oil wealth of today into creating destination cities with a life going beyond oil. It is a breathtaking experiment and if it succeeds it will do so because of and not in spite of the one-upmanship of the different Gulf states, who are a modern equivalent to competition for art that existed among rich Italian city-states during the Renaissance.
Despite Abu Dhabi’s museum building, the art market in the Middle East is still centred on Dubai. This is because institutions in Abu Dhabi have not purchased the Arab and Iranian modern and contemporary artists that are sought after by local collectors. The great successes have come since 2005 when, beginning with the foundation of commercial galleries like The Third Line, and gathering pace with the arrival of Christie’s, whose first sale was in spring 2006. Younger artists like The Third Line’s Farhad Moshiri as well as older artists, like sculptor Parviz Tanavoli and painter Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, saw their prices rise from a few thousand dollars at the beginning of the decade to the low millions by the spring of 2008.
However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that part of the success story has been a speculative bubble and the heights of spring 2008 were not sustainable in the different circumstances of the global credit crunch. Back then Christie’s had a US$20mn sale, with 80% of lots sold, and Bonhams in their first modern Arab art sale sold lots worth around US$10mn.
By this November, Christie’s returned very different results, selling under US$9mn total and only 70% of the lots. In other words less sold and what did sell sold for a lot less. Bonhams’ November sale was also poor but at least they had one sale this spring.
Sotheby’s announced in October that it plans to start up auctions including modern Arab art in Doha. Publicly Christie’s Will Lawrie called this “a settling of prices”, privately others have called the situation horrible and do not expect the market to return for two years. Whether or not that time scale is optimistic it is worth bearing in mind that this is no worse a decline than western modern and contemporary art with modern favourites like Richard Prince, whose prices grew similarly quickly to the artists mentioned above, falling in value faster than the stock market.
To some extent it is reasonable to expect these prices to revive with the oil price, which will return once the world moves out of recession, however long that will be. However, will collectors who have been badly burnt be prepared to return to the market place? Yes, although more selectively. And once the mighty Abu Dhabi institutions are operational, if they do begin to integrate the great art they plan for their collections with the Arab and Iranian art that is sold in the art fairs, the galleries and the auction houses of Dubai, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that they will spearhead even greater prices than the peak of spring 2008.