In the Middle East and abroad, contemporary Arab art has become a permanent fixture in galleries, private collectors’ homes and auction houses. No longer part of the shifting ephemera in the art world, Middle Eastern artists are consistently fetching high prices, though still only fair on the international market. Nowhere is this growth more notable than at the global auction house Christie’s in Dubai, with biannual cumulative sales in the league of $20 million for modern and contemporary Arab, Iranian and Turkish art.
The auction house heavyweight has set a pattern of continually breaking artist records, blazing a trail for emerging talent. Since its inception in 2005, Christie’s Dubai has sold more than $150 million in contemporary Middle Eastern art, bolstered by international participation in the sales. With this surge, Dubai has been christened the global center for the sale of Middle Eastern art.
