Art market

The art market inches back to growth

16 March 2026
In 2025, global art sales hit $59.6 billion – and that’s up by 4 percent year-on-year. The modest increase follows two successive years of decline, though the 2025 total is still well short of the post-Covid 2022 peak of $70.4 billion. So says the tenth annual Art Basel [ … ]
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magpie Weekly issue 7.21 / 5 Mar 2026

5 March 2026
This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest The quote: Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you | Pericles … What’s going on We’re only five days into a war [ … ]
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magpie Weekly issue 7.20 / 26 Feb 2026

26 February 2026
This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest The quote: If you don’t call it art, you’re likely to get a better result Brian Eno … Public art direction The appointment of Elvira Dyangani Ose as director of the forthcoming Abu Dhabi Public Art Biennial looked an [ … ]
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magpie Weekly issue 7.18 / 12 Feb 2026

12 February 2026
This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest The quote: From such crooked timber as humankind is made of nothing entirely straight can be made Immanuel Kant … No worries Not in the Gulf, anyway. That’s according to a Gallup survey which asked people in [ … ]
Performance

A people’s opera

10 February 2026
The UAE may be something of a laboratory for change, a still-young country building nationhood and reputation at speed with all the resources it can deploy without the baggage of a complicated past and a complex set of competing ideologies [ … ]
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magpie Weekly issue 7.17 / 5 Feb 2026

5 February 2026
This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest The quote: Playful doesn’t mean trivial any more than solemn means serious Stephen Sondheim … Louvre legacy Manuel Rabaté is leaving Louvre Abu Dhabi, where since 2016 he has been its first and so far [ … ]