This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest
The quote There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss Douglas Adams
Buy the numbers The global art market in 2024 was down 12% on the year before, at $57.5bn. So says the fresh-off-the-press Art Basel/UBS Art Market Report, undoubtedly the deepest and most comprehensive analysis of art market data that’s available; and we’ve read it all. We also consumed the two other recent market reports, from Artprice and Artnet, and we have all the headlines in our report here – but there were some numbers left over, too, so we collated them for you here …
Francofilm The 15th Franco Film Week runs 11-17 April at Cinema Akil, with eight Francophone features including the excellent Monsieur Aznavour and The Marching Band. There’ll be subtitles, natch. A festival pass, good for all eight films, is AED 150 plus VAT. Details are here …
Gallery daze Dubai’s galleries organise some of their best shows of the year to coincide with the influx of moneyed visitors for Art Dubai (open 18-20 April to the public), but this year they’ve outdone themselves – there are just so many good-looking shows around town starting in the next few days. Frankly we’re spoiled for choice – see the Agenda for a more comprehensive list – but five we’ll definitely be checking out are Hazem Harb at Tabari, Bashir Makhoul at Zawyeh, Michael Sailstorfer at Carbon 12, Sama Alshaibi at Ayyam, and of course Hassan Sharif at Gallery Isabelle …
Coming soon Later in the year Alserkal Avenue is getting another gallery, and it should be well worth watching – Taymour Grahne Projects has hitherto represented its artists from offices in London and New York via pop-ups and art fairs (including Abu Dhabi Art and Art Dubai in the recent past); now it’s opening its first permanent gallery in the Avenue this September. It’s taking a 186m2 space and will open with a solo show by American artist Gail Spaien …
Abu Dhabi Art dates The star Emirati artist Shaikha Al Mazrou has been named as the Visual Campaign Artist for the 17th Abu Dhabi Art, which will take place 19 to 23 November …
Feeling blue Today’s your last chance to ogle one of the world’s rarest diamonds, a 10k blue from South Africa called The Mediterranean Blue. It’s on show at Abu Dhabi’s Bassam Freiha Art Foundation on Saadiyat along with seven other stones worth a total of around $100m. Sotheby’s expects it to be sold for a cool $20m at auction in May …
Daily dose PoetiCal is “an experimental, collaborative publication only accessible through a calendar app” – you submit a piece of text (could be virtually anything) and a date on which you would like it published; users sync their calendar with PoetiCal, and it will be updated with new works as and when they are published. What a great idea …
Something for the weekend Save the chickens, three at a time. Do it here …
Things we didn’t know no.94 ‘Dreamt‘ is the only English word that ends in the letters mt …
Earworm of the week Abri : Possessions / First World Problems
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