This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest
The quote To ask why we need libraries at all, when there is so much information available elsewhere, is about as sensible as asking if roadmaps are necessary now that there are so very many roads Jon Bing
Home-grown prizes The fifth edition of the UAE Designer Exhibition at last year’s Downtown Design, which showed furniture and products from around 30 emerging UAE-based designers, has won the ‘Best Incubator’ award in the 2025 Monocle Design Awards. Seems well deserved; as the citation puts it, “Abu Dhabi and Dubai have long imported star architects and designers from across the globe for major works … The UAE Designer Exhibition is shifting the narrative” in its emphasis on emerging local talent …
Library love We have a lot of time for librarians, especially school librarians; they’re the tour guides for the countries of the imagination. A big hand then for Emirates Literature Foundation’s School Librarians of the Year Award 2025, which had a record-breaking 106 nominations this year. The main SLOY winners were Azza Mohamed, Qatr Alnada School, Abu Dhabi for the public schools award; and Marina Koniotou, Amity International School, Abu Dhabi, for the private schools section. (The capital did well – there were eight awards in total, and Abu Dhabi schools won six of them.)
Mouse to Yas If Saadiyat is being groomed as Culture Corner, it looks like Yas has been designated for more popular entertainment. Disney is to build its seventh theme park there, alongside the likes of the Ferrari and Warner Bros amusement parks, SeaWorld Abu Dhabi, and Yas Waterworld. Touted as “the most advanced and interactive destination in the Disney portfolio,” it will be built and operated by Miral with Disney licencing its IP and providing “development and management services” (but no investment cash – Disney will be getting royalties and service fees) …
Delayed policies Dubai Opera has introduced a new latecomer policy: turn up late and you will not get into the auditorium until there’s an intermission (and presumably not at all if there isn’t one). This is “to maintain an atmosphere of respect and focus for everyone in the theatre” – and frankly it’s what just every other formal theatre/opera venue does. “Together, let’s honour the art” intones the Dubai Opera message, rather than say “It’s rude to arrive late and expect to take your seat. Also, turn off your phone and don’t eat popcorn” …
421 pump-priming In a batch announcement, 421 has named 15 artists and collectives from the MENASA region as the participants elected for its Curatorial Development Program, Artistic Research Grant, and Homebound Residency. They’ll get grants and other financial resources plus professional support to work on “projects that explore critical issues related to human engagement with the environment” …
It tolls for thee 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.Dubai’s toll gate operator Salik clocked up revenues of AED 752m for Q1 2025, a third more than the same period last year. There were 158m chargeable trips in total, thanks to the two new toll gates installed last November and the introduction of variable pricing at the end of January. It all meant profits for the period increased 34% YoY to hit AED 371m, which should pay for a few more gates …
Sign of the times Kickstarter is introducing a new ‘tariff manager tool’ that will allow creators to add extra charges to projects that were already fully funded in order to deal with the higher and unexpected costs of the president’s global trade war …
Biennial podworld We’ve been listening to the Biennial Bytes, the official podcast of the Sharjah Biennial, and it’s really rather good. True, not all artists and curators are natural communicators via the spoken word;, and of course not all of them have English as their first language. But the opener sets the tone, a conversation between Hoor Al Qasimi and the five curators of SB16 – Alia Swastika, Amal Khalaf, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Natasha Ginwala and Zeynep Öz – which says more about the thinking behind their selections than any press release or website copy can. And much the same goes for the other dozen or so Biennial Bytes we’ve listened to, with SB16 artists talking about their projects. Highly recommended, and at around 30 minutes per pod just about the right length. Available at the usual podcast stores, like Apple and Spotify, or directly here …
Get one free Ewan Valentine’s Honda Civic Type-R was stolen from his driveway in the British Midlands, and he used the insurance money to look for a replacement. He found one that looked identical – same colour, same extras, similar mileage – and bought it for £20,000. But then he began recognising various items inside, like a Tesco sandwich bag containing the locking wheel nut and some Christmas tree pinecones in the boot. The penny finally dropped when he found his own address saved in the satnav …
Coincidence corner After the US Copyright Office published a 113-page report citing concerns about using copyrighted materials to train AI (though it wasn’t exactly a damning conclusion: “several stages in the development of generative AI involve using copyrighted works in ways that implicate the owners’ exclusive rights”) the Trump administration emailed the office’s director, Shira Perlmutter, announcing her termination …
Art Week there Art Week Riyadh (5–13 April) clocked up more than 17,000 visitors – not bad for an inaugural edition, albeit one that featured 50+ galleries, 200+ artists, 500+ artworks and 100+ activations across 13 locations …
Tonight’s the Night Two to catch this evening: Bong Joon Ho’s smash hit black comedy Parasite at Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the Fridge’s good Open Mic night in Dubai …
Art diary At least two interesting shows open this week – Layered Medium: We Are in Open Circuits (radical works from the Seoul Museum of Art @ Manarat al Saadiyat) and Unstable Grounds (the 2025 NYUAD MFA grad show @ 421)
Something for the weekend The Alphabet Book Challenge invites you to get from A to Z by guessing the word that 26 books each chose for their themed alphabets, using as few hints as possible. Much fun. Play it here …
Things we didn’t know no.94 Los Angeles’ full name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula (the Porciuncula is the small Italian church where St Francis of Assisi lived. He founded the Franciscan order, and two Franciscans documented the original expedition and settlement that founded LA).
Earworm of the week Real Lies : Towards Horses
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