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Art Basel Gulf Looks like the rumoured $20m deal for Art Basel to take over Abu Dhabi Art isn’t happening – Art Basel is coming to the region next February as Art Basel Qatar, a curated boutique show of around 50 galleries. Naturally we have the details, some of the back story, and lots of speculation ...
Elementary It’s Sherlock Holmes Day today (apparently because 22 May is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday. So shouldn’t it be Conan Doyle Day?)
The Dubai Guinness World Record is back This one is for the Largest Awareness Ribbon Mosaic in Support of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. It’s 30m2 and was assembled using over 20,000 purple IBD awareness ribbons. “This powerful visual representation of solidarity aims to shed light on the challenges faced by IBD patients while symbolising hope for improved care and increased awareness.” Let’s hope it works ...
The Mamluks are coming Louvre Abu Dhabi’s 2025-2026 season looks like another good one, opening 17 September with Mamluks: Legacy of an Empire. The Mamluks could do with more exposure in the West: they were slave-soldiers in the 9th century Abbasid caliphate, destroyed the Crusader kingdoms of Outremer, ruled an area that included Egypt, Syria, the Levant, Saudi Arabia and parts of Anatolia from 1250 until 1517, made Cairo the dominant city of the Islamic world in the later Middle Ages, and promoted craftsmanship, architecture and scholarship. Should be lots of decorative goodies on show – “a remarkable selection of objects” as the press bumf puts it.
The other big exhibition is next year’s Picasso, the Figure, exploring the artist’s approach to the human form and tracing his engagement with mythological, surrealist, and classical themes throughout his career. Lovely stuff ...
Nahas for Venice Lebanon’s Venice Biennale artist for next year will be Nabil Nahas, with Nada Ghandour as curator of the country’s Pavilion ...
AI slop on the beach The first ten titles in a Chicago Sun-Times 'summer reading' list turn out to be AI fakes. "We are looking into how this made it into print ... It is not editorial content and was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom ... We value your trust in our reporting and take this very seriously" intoned the publication as it looks for someone else to blame.
Ted Gioia’s take, as always, makes an interesting read. “The article starts with a recommendation for Tidewater Dreams by Isabel Allende ... The book simply doesn’t exist. I’ll predict, however, that an AI-generated book with this title will show up on Amazon within a few days. When you live in a world of AI hallucinations, this is how the business model plays out ...”
Open doors door.link is “a handpicked music selection, grown over time, algorithm-free, made for listening and dancing” (mostly listening, in fact) which harks back to a time when without automatic playlists or ads, discovering music was the result of deliberate research, which made the listener, at the very least, selective ...” There are 150 or so ‘doors’ to date, typically 45-50 minutes long. Check it out here.
New New Media opp Saudi Arabia’s pioneering new media arts centre Diriyah Art Futures has launched an open call for applications to its second Emerging New Media Artists programme – a unique and “fully supported” one-year programme, well worth checking out if you are 35 years or younger, at graduate or postgraduate completion stage, and have some experience in New Media and Digital Art. Apply by 16 June. We’ll have details on the Opportunities page in a day or so, but in the meantime check it out here ...
Tonight's the Night Second night (of four) for MTDXB's Guys and Dolls at Sunmarke School in JVT: an adaptation of Yasmina Reza's Carnage at SUAD on Reem Island: and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) at Zabeel Theatre (second night of four) ...
Something for the weekend One Million Chessboards is a game with (yep) one million chessboards – moving a piece on one board moves it for everyone, instantly, on all boards. Technically brilliant, and probably guaranteed to make your head explode ...
Things we didn’t know no.94 Haribos are so-named because the sweet business's founder Hans Riegel lived in Bonn.
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