This week’s editorial musings
from magpie’s nest
The quote: She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS | Henry James …
Register here DCT Abu Dhabi has launched a Register of Cultural Organisations and Professionals and wants you to sign up here if you’re an organisation or individual in the visual or performing arts, AV and multimedia, architecture, advertising, crafts, heritage, archives, libraries, publishing “or any other culture-related area of activity”. Registration is voluntary “at this stage” but ROCOP membership will be required for anyone wanting to work with DCT Abu Dhabi (or to get funding from it). Sign up here …
Miami to Dubai via Rue Rue Kothari has been named as Director of Design Miami Dubai, the partnership between Alserkal and Design Miami that brings the global platform for collectible design to the region. For five formative years she ran Downtown Design in the period that made the interiors fair a key part of Dubai Design Week; Downtown Design is more of a B2B event, Design Miami sells itself more as design-as-art collectibles fair – not unlike the Down Design spin-off Editions (which came along after her stint). Design Miami Dubai launches early 2027 …
Showtime Described as “the UAE’s first collaborative gallery exhibition”, Déjà vu is a 14-day selling show in Alserkal Avenue’s Concrete from 25 April. It features 50+ artists represented by 20 UAE galleries; the aim is to provide them with a commercial opportunity given the current state of the world … Also in the Avenue, Ishara Art Foundation’s excellent Urdu Worlds has been extended by a couple of weeks to 13 June … And don’t miss the last chance to take in another really good exhibition, 421’s 10-year anniversary show Rays, Ripples, Residue, which closes 26 April …
Opp 1 Sharjah Art Foundation’s Short Film Production Grant – apply for share of AED 120,000 (usually 3-4 grantees) to complete a short film (max 50 mins) to be premiered at Sharjah Film Platform 2026. Deadline 28 May, details here …
Opp 2 Iris Projects in Abu Dhabi has an open call for artists, writers, poets, photographers, designers and creatives (including children) for contributions to “a living memory collective” titled Still We Create, aiming to preserve the memory of the present moment through artistic expression. Selected works will be exhibited and published in a book, both planned for late 2026. Deadline 18 May. Info here …
Opp 3 DXB Store is participating in the Cultural Commons section of Art Dubai (14-17 May). It’s looking for proposals from UAE-based makers, designers, collectives and creative practitioners offering “functional objects, accessories, apparel, stationery and design objects”; they should be new (or specifically adapted for the DXB Store) and have a max price of AED 500. Deadline for proposals is 26 April – queries to hello@dxbstore.ae; more info here …
Opp 4 Capsule Arts is looking for “a creative and career-driven” Art Consultant – 1-3 years of experience in a similar role (pitches, artist and client liaison, architecture and/or interior design) and proficiency in AutoCAD, InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch-Up, and Microsoft Office (blimey, good luck with that lot). Apply by 1 May with CV to cv@capsulearts.com …
Walk the dome One of the new Louvre Abu Dhabi guided tours for adults is the Architectural Experience, a survey of the ideas and innovations behind the creation of the museum: seven stops around the places, finishing up with a special walk inside the iconic dome – which alone should be worth the AED 170 price, even if you don’t count the free copy of Louvre Abu Dhabi: Story of an Architectural Project. Every Saturday at 10.30am; lasts 90 minutes. Book here …
Check ‘em out It can take an incomer years to figure out all the traditions, beliefs and hidden wrinkles that are in place among the locals. If you want some shortcuts, this resource from Australian public broadcasters SBS might be worth keeping handy; it has accessible profiles of the cultural norms, behaviours and communication styles of several different communities. The UAE isn’t in there; lots of other places are, however, so your next move (or extended holiday) could benefit …
Write young Sahab Collective’s Young Writers Programme runs on Saturdays, 5.30-7pm from 2 May to 18 July at Al Safa Art & Design Library – young people come together and work toward publishing a short story of 2,000 words. ‘Young’ means aged 11-16. Info here …
Wikispot The Wikipedia app (free for iOS and Android) is very good – not least because of its maps feature showing the location of Wikipedia-based articles. Most are pretty standard and usefully informational; but there are some real gems, like the Hollywood Freeway chickens entry …
BRED delayed BRED Abu Dhabi – a ‘neo-culture’ festival of music, fashion, art, sport, gaming and street food, usually held on Yas – has been postponed from its original May 2026 dates. All tickets will be automatically refunded through whatever ticketing platform you used …
Frieze open Gallery applications are now open for the inaugural edition of Frieze Abu Dhabi (Manarat Al Saadiyat 19–22 Nov). Seems the fair is conceived at “a focused scale” (does that mean small?) but with expanded stand sizes and “a newly designed layout that will prioritise clarity, dialogue, and sustained engagement”. The Selection Committee has some local heavyweights – Yasmin Atassi (Green Art Gallery), Asmaa Al-Shabibi (Lawrie Shabibi), Amrita Jhaveri (Jhaveri Contemporary), Sandhini Poddar (Guggenheim Abu Dhabi) and Glenn Scott Wright (Victoria Miro). Frieze Abu Dhabi will offer bursaries of “up to” 30% for younger galleries.
Alongside the fair there’ll be two curated sections – Global Futures for solo presentations by early to mid-career artists from the UAE and West Asia: Frieze Masters Abu Dhabi for “exceptional objects and artefacts from West Asia … exploring the lasting legacies that characterise ancient art from the region”.
Gallery applications close 14 May …
Zayed Book Awards The 20th Sheikh Zayed Book Award has the Emirates Literature Foundation (responsible among other things for the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature) winning the Publishing & Technology category. Other prizes: Births in the Zoo by Egyptian novelist Ashraf Elashmawy (Literature award), Moroccan scholar Mustapha Rajouane (Young Author), Jordanian author Zuhair Tawfiq (Literary and Art Criticism), Egypt’s Otham Elkhosht for his six-volume Encyclopaedia of World Religions (Manuscripts, Encyclopaedias and Lexicons category), and two international authors – German academic Stefan Weidner for a reader-friendly survey of pre-Islamic poetry, Iraqi-American translator Nawal Nasrallah for her English version of a 13th-century Al-Andalus cookbook. Egyptian singer Nagat El Saghira, “one of the last surviving voices of the golden age of Arabic music”, was awarded Cultural Personality of the Year …
Is AI killing your job? JobsData is a research aggregator that pulls together 522 sources (currently) into something actually readable – covering displacement projections, productivity studies, hiring trends and sector-by-sector exposure data. Most of the data sources are US-centric but the indicators still look relevant globally …
Useful app of the week My bookmarks tend to pile up and some never get revisited. This tool saves links and automatically titles and categorises them so you can find anything in seconds. No manual tagging, no folders to manage, and it’s free. Try it here …
Something for the weekend With Wordfall you have to connect adjacent letters on a grid to spell out words. Each time you get a word it disappears and the remaining letters drop down; the aim is to clear as much of the grid as possible, preferably leaving the “golden” tiles for last – they spell out a bonus word that gets you extra points. Try it here …
Things we didn’t know no.94 Google has shipped and then killed 299 products since 2006 …
Earworm of the week Nova Twins : Monsters
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