Editorial musings from the nest
The quote: I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake Ernest Hemingway …
Get more creative The programme for Dubai Culture’s Al Quoz Creative Entrepreneurship Forum this weekend has belatedly been published (downloadable PDF here) and it looks really good – a packed two days with lots of been-there done-that speakers. We hear some places are still available: register here (it’s free).
Paris = Abu Dhabi? A Financial Times report managed to link Art Basel Paris being closed early because of the unrest in the city with doubts about the status of Frieze Abu Dhabi and Art Basel Qatar “as Iran-backed Houthi militants up their deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia”. One art collector (just one) is quoted as saying “Everyone thinks that Trump will wait until after the midterms to attack Iran again, and then it will get very ugly”; he added that he would be “astonished” if the Frieze event could go ahead “in any meaningful way”. There doesn’t seem too much evidence to support that view right now, and the organisers are making all the right noises about security, but clearly the aftermath of the elections on 3 Nov will be key.
Qatar queries … The exhibitor list for the second Art Basel Qatar (28-30 Jan) has 82 galleries, slightly down on the 87 in the inaugural edition – 35 of whom haven’t rebooked. They include some big names (Hauser & Wirth, Victoria Miro, the troubled Pace) but Vincenzo De Bellis, Art Basel’s global director of fairs, told The Art Newspaper that the high turnover was expected: “across our global fairs, we see greater turnover in the sectors that are theme-led, and in Qatar that approach extends to the fair as a whole”. Still, there are contingency plans to refund or defer participation fees if things kick off in the Gulf; and exhibitors are still getting what The Art Newspaper termed “unusually generous” support – customs clearance, in-country transportation, storage and installation services, hotel accommodation for two, travel and hotel costs for exhibiting artists, and – from the 2027 edition – 50% of outbound shipping costs for unsold works to a maximum of $20,000 per gallery.
… Sotheby’s and Christie’s vote with their sales The world’s two top auction houses seem to have given the UAE a vote of confidence with confirmation that both will be running significant auctions in Abu Dhabi in the next two months. On 1 Nov Christie’s will hold its first fine art auction in Abu Dhabi, with more than 70 lots at the Abu Dhabi Edition hotel under the title MAWASIM: 20 Years of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art. It includes pieces by Paul Guiragossian, Samia Halaby and Nabil Nahas and is estimated to make $6.5m–$9.7m before buyer’s premium.
Sotheby’s first fine art auction in Abu Dhabi, titled Breaking Ground (10 Dec), is going for a more international feel (and probably a bigger sale value) with big-ticket works by the likes of Warhol and Monet plus “leading figures of the Middle Eastern art world” (notably Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim and Hassan Sharif). The range is $6.5m-$9.1m for the 21 lots confirmed so far, but Sotheby’s expects to add more. This one will be at the new Saadiyat Grove Experience Center, over the road from teamLab Phenomena.
Dem bones Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi has extended the deadline for its Name Two Giants competition – you now have midnight on 1 Nov to suggest names for its T. rex and blue whale; do it here. The two winners will be announced on 22 Nov, the museum’s first anniversary.
Improving current affairs at LitFest The Emirates Literature Foundation has signed a deal with Fiker Institute to develop the Current Affairs programme for Emirates LitFest 2027 (14–20 April). Ahlam Bolooki, ELF CEO and LitFest director, said the partnership particularly is about “identifying the questions that are beginning to emerge, the developments that may shape what comes next, and the voices we need to hear as those conversations evolve”. Fiker will also be supporting the Festival’s youth programme.
Anthropic’s very own AI safety bill Politico reports that Anthropic has been discreetly pitching a proposal to US lawmakers under which the government could preempt some state AI safety laws and block the release of an advanced model – if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1bn in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people. So AI companies like Anthropic could kill 49 people and steal up to a billion dollars before anyone could legally stop them …
New concert hall for new Youth Orchestra DCT Abu Dhabi is opening a dedicated institution for the Youth Orchestra Abu Dhabi. A 600-seat concert hall with 18 associated rehearsal and practice rooms, it will provide a professional-standard music education for aspiring young musicians. It’s due to open in January in the MiZa district (yet more cultural heft for the former port area) in a building designed by the studio of the late Frank Gehry, and is open now for enrolment of the first cohort of 100 students aged 6-9 years. Details (and application info) here.
Musk does Odyssey The first seven minutes of Grok’s AI-based version of The Odyssey have been unleashed, created because Musk didn’t like Christopher Nolan’s casting and described as “Episode 1 of our Odyssey series”. It’s everything you might have expected; there’s not much nuance, and that’s putting it charitably.
AI in UAE schools Many Western schools are considering restrictions on generative tools in classrooms, particularly at junior levels. By contrast, the UAE plans to train 22,000 teachers in using AI for lesson planning, teaching and assessment, as it mandates AI education across all grade levels starting in kindergarten on the presumption that early exposure will give students a competitive edge.
Trainees wanted for Art Dubai The latest edition of Art Dubai’s sort-of-internship programme for students and recent graduates, Campus Art Dubai 14.0, is open for applications. Trainees work alongside the Art Dubai team in the run-up to the fair (9-11 April(, getting hands-on experience, learning directly from industry professionals, and maybe exploring career pathways in the arts and creative industries. Apply here.
Lana Nusseibeh as UN secretary general? UAE Minister of State Lana Nusseibeh has entered the race to become the next UN secretary general. She has been the country’s representative to the UN, and led the UAE delegation during its recent two-year membership on the Security Council. She’s entered a crowded field a bit late, and the usual regional rotation favours Latin America this time; five of the other six active candidates are from that region. But there’s reportedly something of a deadlock in the selection process, with veto-holders like the USA unhappy with the South American options, so quite apart from her own merits she could be an acceptable compromise candidate.
PHP admin Worried about the PHP flaws potentially wreaking havoc on the world’s websites? PCWorld has a helpful explainer here.
We read the reports so you don’t have to … Or rather, so that you can decided whether you want to. The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2026 would be better named “Survey of Some Global Collectors”, since it polled just 3,000 or so art buyers; but they are active and well-heeled, and the report is by the very well respected Clare McAndrew, so we ran the rule over the stats and came up with some headline conclusions that we think might have general relevance.
We were happier with ReMuseum’s Five Ways AI Can Humanize Museums – good practice based on case studies (the core argument is that AI can make museums “more personal, accessible, operationally capable, and recognisably themselves”) without going overboard on the wonders of technology. A good read, we thought …
It’s not all bad Stanford researchers have found a new way to resurrect bleached corals. After physically touching healthy coral in the lab, the dying coral completely recovered within seven weeks.
Useful app of the week Purge is a Mac cleaner that seems almost too good to be true – it’s free, checks just about every nook and cranny of the machine, flags only stuff it recognises and explains why they’re safe to remove, and puts deletes into the bin (so they’re recoverable). It found more removable crud on magpie’s MacBook than current incumbents Mole or CleanMyMac. And it’s free … Check it out here.
Something for the weekend Beside the Point is a sort of daily word puzzle; you get given three words have to come up with something that links them (eg Stale/Fruity/Shallow = My girlfriend’s first boyfriend). You pass if the game thinks the connection is valid (it didn’t). At the end you’re invited to come up with another concept which links all three previous answers, and you see what every other players submitted as their responses. Try it here.
Things we didn’t know no.94 So far this season the average NFL game has lasted a loooong 3 hours 11 minutes.
Earworm of the week Lika : Gravitating
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