Corporate art collections on the rise in the UAE

• Long-term UAE commitment
• Creative economy investment
• High profile art exhibitions

A shiny office tower in the heart of Downtown Dubai may not be an obvious home for a growing international art collection but ICD Brookfield Place is becoming just that. 

Among the works or exhibitions it has showcased recently are Canadian visual artist Jordan Söderberg Mill’s light and glass installation Standing Wave, Emirati artist Hashel Al Lamki’s oil painting Anees, and Palestinian-American ceramicist Lena Kassicieh’s Cloud Hopping. 

At the other end of the Sheikh Zayed Road, Abu Dhabi’s state-owned Mubadala Investment Company is building a collection of regional and global art, the Mubadala Corporate Collections.

In December, it announced its latest acquisition, South Korean-American artist Timothy Hyunsoo-Lee’s watercolour triptych Into the Minds of the Invisible.

Corporate art is on the rise in the UAE, reflecting the Gulf state’s increasing investment in its creative economy. In 2021, the Abu Dhabi government initiated a plan to invest another $6 billion in the cultural and creative industries, on top of the $2.3 billion already committed. 

“Making art and culture part of daily life positively impacts wellbeing,” says Malak Abu-Qaoud, head of arts and events at ICD Brookfield Place.

The real estate joint venture between Dubai’s sovereign wealth fund and Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management is focusing largely on artists from the Middle East as it builds its collection, and is curating a calendar of events and exhibitions called Arts Program. 

“It gives Brookfield a competitive edge in the marketplace and enhances the corporate brand,” says Abu-Qaoud.

Iris Projects

Maryam Al Falasi, the Emirati founder of Iris Projects, a contemporary gallery and visual arts and cultural agency set up five years ago, notes an increase in demand for contemporary material by corporate entities. “We saw a gap in the market for advisory and consultation on building collections, especially across corporate and government spheres,” she says.

“In the early days, managing corporate collections versus private sales was generating 30 percent of our income.” She says she expects this to grow in the coming years. 

Prior to 2020, there was much less demand for corporate art in the UAE but now it is growing in line with the country’s increased spending in the cultural sector, Al Falasi explains. In parallel, public and private corporate entities are investing in culture and acquiring art. 

As well as ICD Brookfield Place, Dubai’s Museum of the Future is building its own art collection, as are local conglomerate ARM Holding, which launched its collection in 2021, and real estate developer Emaar Properties.

The latter has one of the largest corporate art collections in the country, Art Emaar, featuring a 15-metre-tall installation by South Korean sculptor Lee Jaehyo near the Burj Khalifa tower.

Why is art so important for a corporate entity? Jolaine Frizzell, founder and managing director of Ivy Advisory, which helps artists in the region, says she has seen “a notable increase in the number of corporations looking to art as a powerful expression of their company pillars and values”.

The trend, she adds, “parallels the UAE’s broader cultural ambitions, driven by government initiatives and global events that underscore the significance of creativity and innovation”. 

Al Falaisi’s Iris Projects helped an undisclosed UAE government entity to build its collection and is currently working with Abu Dhabi real estate developer Aldar Properties and the UAE Space Agency.

It was the UAE government, Al Falasi adds, that “spearheaded corporate art collecting in the country. Government acquisitions were intended to support artists and the development of the creativity economy in the UAE.  

“The public sector tends to invest more generously in art commissions and acquisitions than the average collector as a key objective to support local artists and contribute to the creative economy.” 

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Yet amassing a corporate art collection takes time. “Building a strong corporate art collection is a long-term commitment — it can easily take at least 10 years to establish a strong foundation,” Al Falasi says. “

A significant number of corporate art collections in the UAE were launched in the early 2020s and are still being developed.”

As an increasing number of expatriates come to the UAE and more businesses expand there, demand for corporate art is on the rise.

During the Abu Dhabi Art fair in November, HSBC, which has a global collection of more than 4,000 works of art acquired over more than a century, gave visitors a rare opportunity to view five works from its collection in what marked the bank’s first international exhibition.

The intention was to establish a “meaningful connection” with the UAE art scene, it said at the time. 

Aimee Peters, HSBC’s regional head of brand, partnerships and wholesale marketing, said it was “hopefully the start of more activity to come, both in terms of works travelling here [UAE], possible acquisitions and future exhibitions”.