A new home for Arab art: Sharjah's Barjeel museum to open in 2028

What makes a great neighbour? Good manners are useful. Prying is best avoided. Being interesting without insisting upon it is better still. But perhaps the most intriguing ones are those who don’t reveal themselves all at once. 

The question has been on my mind since I learnt that the Barjeel Art Foundation’s collection, comprising more than 2,000 works of modern and contemporary art from the Arab world, is finally getting a museum of its own in Sharjah in early 2028. A great many artworks, itinerant for much of their lives, will now -acquire neighbours. 

“The museum has reminded me of something basic yet forgotten,” says Rémi Homs, curator of the Barjeel Art Foundation. “Before thinking about broader social changes or visual trends, each artwork begins with an individual artist’s way of seeing the world.”

Bring enough of these distinct perspectives together and you get a marvellous sort of social mixing. Mahmoud Said’s Girl in a Printed Dress (1938) is the Egyptian fellaha, contemplative and composed. Inji Efflatoun’s Dreams of the Detainee (1961), painted during her own imprisonment, is confined in body, though hardly in mind. Baya’s Femme à la Robe Rose (1945) is the more flamboyant sort, perfectly at home among pattern, colour and flights of invention. Palestinian artist Samia Halaby’s Two Diagonals (1968) takes its cue from a still life in her studio. 

In the years since Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi founded Barjeel Art Foundation in 2010, its artworks have become seasoned travellers, appearing in more than 40 exhibitions internationally, with loans to over 170 institutions.

There’s an intriguing symmetry between the collection finally finding a home and that home drawing on Sharjah’s modern residential vernacular. “The museum’s architecture reflects Barjeel’s ethos: a simple but serious institution. And the idea of a home is particularly fitting,” Rémi notes. 

Designed by Mohamed Essa of Architecture Corner Consultants from an original sketch by Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, the museum will span more than 4,000 square metres on a plot of land provided by His Highness Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah. “The inspiration began with Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi’s vision of transforming an old, deteriorated building into a refined space dedicated to art, giving it a new cultural identity while preserving the spirit of its residential origins,” says Mohamed.

The museum’s visual vocabulary is pared back: more fluidity, less flourish. “My approach was guided by simplicity. We deliberately reduced unnecessary architectural lines and decorative elements, with clean geometry, balanced proportions and subtle details defining the building’s character.”

But a home and a museum make different demands: one draws you in, the other must make room for discovery. “I believe they can share the same emotional qualities,” reflects Mohamed. “Our intention was to create a sense of intimacy, comfort and belonging, making visitors feel as welcome as they would in their own homes.”

For the artworks, the museum will offer another kind of respite. “Some of these works have survived decades of war, displacement, looting and broader regional upheavals,” Rémi comments. “Finding them a place to rest and to be seen again is part of our responsibility as custodians of the collection.” 

But permanence changes more than the postcode. Some pieces have never been shown publicly, while widely recognised figures will keep company with artists less accustomed to the spotlight.

“Take the Baghdad Modern Art Group, for example,” says Rémi. “The museum will feature works by its co-founders Jewad Selim and Shakir Hassan Al Said, but we also wanted to bring them into dialogue with artists who were developing their practices around the same time and remain less documented. Widad Al Orfali, for instance, studied with some of the group’s members.” 

New neighbours, perhaps, but hardly strangers. “Placing her work alongside theirs allows us to offer a more nuanced picture of the Iraqi artistic landscape.”

“How do we think about modernity outside the Western canon? How do we bring sidelined artistic practices into the narrative? And how can we be transparent about collecting decisions that have shaped the collection itself?” 

“We intentionally avoided a purely chronological or geographical display. Instead, we wanted to create visual and thematic connections between works and artists, reflecting the diversity and vibrancy of artistic creation in the Arab world, which has never been a -monolithic bloc,” states Rémi. “By moving away from a purely national approach, we can also reveal how artists, ideas and practices travelled across borders.” 

1960s Beirut, for instance, became a major hub for abstraction. “Alongside Lebanese pioneers such as Helen Khal, Nadia Saikali and Huguette Caland, women artists like Juliana Seraphim, Rosevart Sisserian and Mona Saudi came from Palestine, Syria and Jordan, respectively, to study and exhibit in Beirut, bringing with them different ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds.”

Equal gender representation has guided the foundation’s exhibition policy since 2019, with women part of the picture, not peripheral to it.

“In many Western museums of modern art, women artists account for a small proportion of works on view,” observes Rémi. “At Barjeel, we’ve made it a priority to address this imbalance through a gender-balanced display, with at least 50 per cent of the works by women.”

Art history, it turns out, can have -amnesia. “One example is Joséphine Bellamaa, a Lebanese painter active in the early 20th century, whose work has only recently come to greater attention,” Rémi notes. 

“When researching women artists in the Arab world, the names that usually emerge first are Marie Haddad in Lebanon, Madiha Umar in Iraq, and Amy Nimr in Egypt, all active from the 1930s onwards. But (Joséphine) Bellamaa’s Portrait of a Distinguished Gentleman, dated 1906, complicates this chronology, reminding us that women were active much earlier than accounts often acknowledge.”

“One aspect I’m interested in is the role of craft,” Rémi continues. “In Western art history, modern art has been presented in opposition to craft: the intellectual versus the manual, the autonomous versus the functional, associating the latter with gendered and domestic work.”

In the Arab world, women artists saw no reason to keep the two apart. “Saloua Raouda Choucair is a good example: known primarily as a pioneer of abstraction, she extended her research into fashion, design and furniture, forcing us to reflect on these categories.” 

And so, the Barjeel museum will give the collection something it never quite had before: the chance to live together. Works from various generations will gather: the newcomer next to the old hand, the sociable alongside the one who likes solitude. There will be affinities and perhaps a disagreement or two. But this is a household of art from the Arab world, after all. I suspect hospitality will prevail.