Editorial musings from the nest
The quote: For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three Alice Kahn …
ART HERE SOON Louvre Abu Dhabi and Richard Mille have named six shortlisted artists for the sixth Art Here / Richard Mille Art Prize show from the 300 proposals received – Ahaad Alamoudi, Almaha Jaralla, Muhammad Shamin Sahrum, Ravikumar Kashi, Reena Kallat, and Vivek Vilasini. (The last three are Indian, reflecting the expansion of the pool to include artists from India as well as GCC.) They’ll produce work for the Art Here exhibition opening 11 Nov; the winner of the $60,000 Richard Mille Art Prize will be selected later by a jury comprising Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan of UAE Unlimited, Dr Guilhem André from Louvre Abu Dhabi, Art Here guest curator Kamini Sawhney, and Maya Allison from NYUAD Art Gallery.
OUD MEETS FLUTE The Arts Center at NYUAD likes to give us the unexpected: and oud (Hazem Shaheen) meets flute (Naïssam Jalal) for an evening of top-quality meditative improvisation on Friday. We wondered how – they’re very different instruments and Western jazz is very different to Middle Eastern taqsim. So we asked …
WHAT GALLERIES WANT The Artlogic Gallery Report 2026 is out now, bringing together insights from 521 galleries across 57 countries to reveal how the business of running a gallery is changing. We checked out the numbers, which were most interesting on attitudes to technology inc AI …
FREE FILM WORKSHOPS Abu Dhabi’s Creative Media Authority is running a four-day workshop series for film pros and “emerging talents interested in pursuing opportunities in the film industry” – 6-8pm, 12–15 Oct at Yas Creative Hub. Topics: Acting for Film and Screen, Product Placement and Brand Integration, Stunts and Action, Script Development and Storytelling. They’re free; you can sign up for any or all. Details here.
READ ON (AND ON) A survey of surveys on reading includes one long-running study which found that teenagers who spent more of their free time reading became adults who were more socially connected, seeing family and friends more often. And they might live longer too: in a study of 3,500 older adults, those who read books lasted 23 months longer than nonreaders.
FRIEZE UNPICKED The magpie team took a closer look at the Frieze Abu Dhabi announcements and concluded that despite the similarities to Abu Dhabi Art there are some very significant contrasts between the two fairs. Fortunately, ‘different’ doesn’t mean ‘worse’ …
HOW TO WIN FRIENDS WITH YOUR TICKETING POLICIES “Your browsing activity has been paused. We’ve detected unusual behaviour on either your network or your browser. To resolve this: 1. Sign in to your account if you haven’t already (how, if the browser has been locked out?) 2. Change your Wi-Fi or cellular network (tried that, it didn’t work) 3. Switch devices or move to a different location if possible (it isn’t)” Thanks a bunch, Ticketmaster.ae.
WAYFINDING FIX We managed to get the link wrong in last week’s mention of the newly published ArtMap. You can in fact download a copy here.
CURIOUS CURSORS A Neil Fun opus called Cursor Camp has been crowned winner of the 2026 Tiny Awards (which celebrate “the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web”). See how many of the little surprises in Cursor Camp you can find as you take your cursor for a visit.
NAME DEM BONES Abu Dhabi’s Natural History Museum has launched a public competition to name two of the most significant specimens in its collection – a near-complete T Rex (NHM already has one called Stan) and a 25m blue whale. Offer as many names as you like via the website: entries close on 25 Oct. Winning names will be permanently displayed by the exhibits and each winner will get “a commemorative prize”.
BAD THINGS 1 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “we believe the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefit of this technology and people having the agency” when Politico asked him about OpenAI’s attitude to regulation.
BAD THINGS 2 US public schools implemented nearly 12,000 book bans over the past year; the bans applied to 7,370 individual works, a record since PEN America began tracking them in 2021. For the second consecutive year Stephen King (!) was the most-banned author.
FUNNY OLD WORLD The Dubai Comedy Festival kicks off this week with a chance to compare the big names at big venues (Mo Gilligan, Katherine Ryan, Dubai Opera) with club-style standup bills (DCF seems to have taken over Pepperoni Comedy Club for the purpose). With the big-name big-money bookings you get an extended set from a pro, sometimes in the middle of a tour that means a well-honed act. With the club setting you get more comics for less money, sets of 10-15 mins max from people who probably have a day job too, and the chance to drink while you laugh. Swings ‘n’ roundabouts. Here are our picks from week one of DCF:
🤣 9-10 Oct Ahmed Ahmed and Friends Pepperoni AED 125+
🤣 11 Oct Short + Sweet Comedy Finale Pepperoni AED 150+
🤣 12 Oct Katherine Ryan Dubai Opera AED 195+
LAST CHANCE Three shows we liked close on Sunday – Sara Masinaei‘s exploration of urban spaces (a good result for Dom Arts’ Studio Support Programme), Hamad Almuzaini‘s complementary approach to placemaking at Tashkeel, and Andalukova Gallery’s rich celebration of autumn …
Useful app of the week AI assistants can harvest a lot of your information you might prefer to keep private (the Lumo AI Paper Trail app can show you just how much). An extra to the Weeve transcriber helps you cut out much of it. Paste text or upload a file you’re planning to run through an AI and the anonymiser will remove names, addresses, company details, IBANs, SSNs, and other identifying elements. You can then use the stripped text in an AI prompt. It’s free, requires no download or log-in, and takes seconds. Check it out here.
Something for the weekend Movie Cast is a build-a-studio make-a-movie game with some depth to it. a guess-the-language word game. Pick the scale of your film and its genre, draft in a director and cast five to ten actors, release it and see how the world reacts. Build another couple of films to see how the studio is doing.
Try it here.
Things we didn’t know no.94 Lamborghinis owe just about everything to a tractor clutch. Ferruccio Lamborghini’s first products were cheap yet powerful tractors salvaged from surplus military material. He got rich from this, indulged his passion for cars, discovered that Ferraris used the same clutches as his tractors and complained, got brushed off by Enzo Ferrari and started a feud, decided to design a better supercar, and unveiled the Lamborghini 350 GT in 1963.
Earworm of the week Man/Woman/Chainsaw : Nosedive
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