magpie Weekly issue 7.37 / 9 July 2026

This week’s editorial musings
from magpie’s nest

The quote: Art galleries should hang terrible paintings from the same period as their masterpieces so that visitors can realise quite how amazing the good paintings are | James Marriott …

Dubai’s cultural sector ambitions The newly announced Dubai Cultural Strategy 2033 – part of an AED 18bn package of initiatives that also include cutting red tape for new businesses, setting up an Islamic finance technology centre, and building an elevated highway parallel to Sheikh Zayed Road (!) – aims to make the city “a global cultural reference, rooted in the UAE’s heritage, pioneering innovation and talent”. There are four pillars, 40 initiatives, 23 KPIs, and specific goals that include support for 6,000+ local talents, attract another 6,000+ international creatives, increase Dubai’s cultural asset footprint by more than 200%, raise the sector’s GDP contribution to 5.4% (the last number we could find was 4.6%, back in 2022) and grow the value of public-private partnerships in the sector to AED 2.75bn. We’ll report more when we can get some detailed information …

Christo Award Winners of the 14th Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award ($10,000 production grant plus exhibition at Frieze Abu Dhabi) are Noora Jabir and Moufida Mohideen, 2024 graduates of NYUAD and U Sharjah respectively. Inspired by the prehistoric site of Tell Abraq, their project Everyday Artifacts looks at how local knowledge and contemporary livelihoods can inform the interpretation of historical artifacts and sites – taking as its starting point a partially buried fishing hook that connects past and present livelihoods in the UAE …

Work at Tashkeel Tashkeel has added a Workspace & Events offering at its Nad Al Sheba campus – meeting rooms, event spaces and flexible workspaces for hire. This makes sense, broadening the basic studios-plus-members-club setup (it plans to grow from 19 studios now to 58 in 2027) “to support both creative production and professional enterprise within a single, considered ecosystem”. Prices look ok for no-contract drop-ins: Flexidesk spaces are AED 160 per 10-hour day, a group of four spaces is AED 320, and you can get a four-seater enclosed ‘Quiet Pod’ for AED 500. Book here …

Tiny plug Nominations for this year’s Tiny Awards – for creative, non-commercial websites built in the past 12 months – have just gone live. A shortlist will be picked by judges, then in Sept the public get to vote. The winner gets a small prize and a small handmade trophy. Well worth supporting, so nominate anything you like (or have made) …

Input to LitFest Emirates LitFest is looking for input to help shape “future Festival communications, programme formats and audience resources”. It’s a 5 min survey to be completed by Friday 10 July; five respondents will get a LitFest merch packs (content and value unspecified). Here it is …

Gallery moving … Aisha Alabbar Gallery shut its doors on 30 June at warehouse 19 Alserkal Avenue and will be moving to warehouse 50 (next to Concrete: used to be part of Alserkal Foundation’s Project Space) – “a refreshed environment that will continue to host the artists, exhibitions, and conversations that shape our programme”. No word yet on the reopening schedule, but there should be a new Gallery Director and Marketing Manager in place …

… Gallery gone Mondoir is closing its gallery in Downtown Dubai, but this one looks more permanent – owner/founder Amir Soleymani told us they were being evicted. He said he hopes to open another space “dedicated to art and culture” at some time in the future; and in the meantime, Mondoir’s online presence and activities continue as before …

Master design DIDI’s new Master of Design in Creative Leadership (MDes) is a one-year hybrid programme (weekends and evenings) that claims to equip both non-designers and designers with the leadership skills to drive innovation across industries. The usual AED 75,000 fee is being discounted to AED 60,000+VAT for the inaugural cohort (starting Sept 2026) …

Job share Hoor Al Qasimi has added the chairpersonship (or presidency: WAM and her PR agency seem to disagree here) of Sharjah Museums Authority to the many jobs she already has – including heading the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, The Africa Institute, Global Studies University and the University of the Arts Sharjah as well as last year’s Aichi Triennale and the 2026 Biennale of Sydney plus (of course) her main role as head of Sharjah Arts Foundation and the Sharjah Biennial …

ZNM research grants Researchers from around the world are invited to apply to the 2026 Zayed National Museum Research Fund for research projects contributing to the preservation, advancement of knowledge and understanding of the heritage and culture of the UAE and wider region. On offer are 10 small grants (max AED 70,000 each) and two large ones (max AED 150,000 each). Submit applications by 20 Aug; more info here …

Be surprised Taken is a free privacy tool that reads everything your browser gives away the moment you land on it, from your location to your screen to your battery, then shows you exactly what it learned and how it did it … all without asking you. Didn’t get it quite right for us – said we had Safari not DuckDuckGo, located us 125 miles away – but otherwise quite scarily accurate: depending on the browser, Taken reported between 32 and 39 ‘data points’ extracted in the first few milliseconds. It’s here …

More media mingle We’ve been told about another get-together for media types – The Edit, a weekly media industry night on Wednesdays at Observatory Lounge on top of the Dubai Marriott Harbour. Simply show a company ID or business card to get in – unlimited drinks for AED 99 plus 50% off food throughout the evening …

Shop M39 Madar_39, the coworking-plus space in Abu Dhabi’s Mina Zayed, has opened a “concept retail space” (aka “shop”?) called Al Maisan for work from members “and the wider creative community”. It looks good …

Choose your news This is an interesting idea – “the world’s first reliable chatbot for news”. Newsguard, an organisation which deals with countering misinformation, has launched its own LLM to source information solely from its own list of approved sources (12,000 news outlets rated as reliable and regularly matched against 60,000+ instances of provably false claims circulating online). Worth a try …

Sikka open call Dubai Culture is seeking participants for next January’s Sikka Art & Design Festival – deadline 17 Aug – for visual arts, drawing, sculpture, photography, design, murals, multimedia, culinary arts, interactive workshops, musical performances, talks “and more”. There’s a theme: The Return, because Sikka 2027 includes some events in its original home of Al Fahidi as well as Al Shindagha. At present it looks as though only artists can apply (“other categories to be announced soon”). Register here …

Useful app of the week Tinkerfont is a Chrome and Firefox add-on for designers who want to see how different fonts look on real websites: detect the fonts on any page, swap them with candidates from Bunny Fonts or your own uploads, and see the result on layout and content – all before you touch CSS or whatever. Find it here …

Something for the weekend Hamster Run is a simple game in which your hamster has to jump over rocks as it runs across the screen for 60 seconds. The catch: the hamster eats the sunflower seeds it encounters, and they make your rodent faster and so harder to control. Try it here …

Things we didn’t know no.94 The surveyors who first calculated Everest’s height in the 1850s measured it as exactly 29,000 ft, but thought that no one would believe that it wasn’t simply rounded to the nearest thousand. So they added 2ft and officially recorded 29,002 ft. An Indian team surveying more accurately in 1954 found the mountain actually to be 29,028 ft, so the oldsters weren’t too far off …

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