# Barjeel Art Foundation

Barjeel Art Foundation is a non-profit arts organisation based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. The foundation was established in 2010 by Emirati commentator Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi to manage and exhibit his personal art collection. There are over 1,000 pieces of modern and contemporary art in the foundation's art collection. The organisation primarily focuses on artwork produced by Arab artists worldwide and includes paintings, sculptures and installations.
Between 2013 and 2018, the foundation mounted 23 exhibitions in countries including Egypt, UK, Jordan, United States, Kuwait, Singapore, and Iran. In May 2018, a semi-permanent exhibition of the key artworks opened in the Sharjah Art Museum. From 2018 through 2022, the exhibition Taking Shape: Abstraction From the Arab World, 1950s-1980 was hosted at museums and galleries in the states of New York, Massachusetts, Florida, and Illinois in the US.

## History

The etymology of Barjeel is derived from the Arabic word for wind tower. Al-Qassemi started collecting art in 2002 and planned on eventually making the collection available to the public. In 2010, the foundation began exhibiting its collection in an arts space in the Al Qasba district in central Sharjah. In May 2018, the collection moved to a 750 square meter dedicated wing at the Sharjah Art Museum, with the inaugural long-term exhibit A Century in Flux.

## Collaborations and initiatives

Barjeel Art Foundation has lent artworks to institutions for exhibition including the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Whitechapel Gallery, in England, Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization in the UAE, and Casa Arabe, Cordoba, Spain.
The first external collaboration for the foundation was the 2013 exhibition 'Terms & Conditions' in Singapore. The Singapore Art Museum borrowed half of the art pieces for the exhibition from Barjeel and the other half from the National Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris and the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha. In 2015, Barjeel opened the first-ever showcase of political Arab art in North America at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto. The exhibit, titled 'Home Ground', featured 24 works by 12 different Arab artists, including paintings, sculptures, and photographs.
Since May 2018, the Barjeel Art Foundation collection has been in display at the Sharjah Art Museum through an agreement between the foundation and the Sharjah Museums Authority. The long-term exhibition will last until May 2023 and hosts a selection of modernist paintings and sculptures from the foundation's collection, including works by Saloua Raouda Choucair, Kadhim Hayder, and Dia Azzawi. The exhibition provides access to scholars and researchers to study the art pieces on display.
In January 2020, 75 pieces from Barjeel's modern abstract art collection will go on a 2-year-long touring exhibition in the United States. The exhibition, titled 'Taking Shape: Abstractions from the Arab World 1950s-1980s', will rotate between the Grey Art Gallery and the Johnson Museum of Art in New York, the Block Museum of Art in Illinois, the McMullen Museum of Art in Massachusetts, and the University of Michigan Museum of Art.
The foundation's education initiatives include the Barjeel Global Fellowship with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. The foundation has organised forums such as Abstraction Unframed: Fourth Annual Conference of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Turkey, and Iran (AMCA). Barjeel has released a series of publications on Arab art and its history.

## Exhibitions
### In-house exhibitions

| Exhibition | Date |
| Peripheral Vision | 14 March – 28 September 2010 |
| Residua | 22 October 2010 - 22 February 2011 |
| Strike Oppose | 11 March - 28 September 2011 |
| Caravan | 14 October 2011 - 22 February 2012 |
| Alienation | 24 March - 28 September 2012 |
| Re: Orient | 11 March - 22 November 2013 |
| Tarīqah | 21 February, - 24 October 2014 |
| Aide-Mémoire | 6 December 2014 - 6 February 2015 |
| Footnotes (aide-mémoire part II) | 1 March - 1 October 2016 |
| Walls and Margins | 21 October 2015 - 1 February 2016 |
| Home Ground | 25 February – 1 September 2016 |
| Beloved Bodies | 14 October 2016 - 1 February 2017 |
| Night Was Paper and We Were Ink | 28 October 2017 - 4 February 2018 |
| Paul Guiragossian: Testimonies of Existence | 24 February - 28 April 2018 |

### External exhibitions

| Exhibition | Location | Date |
| Terms & Conditions | Singapore Art Museum, Singapore | 28 June - 28 September 2013 |
| Modes and Methods | Google Arts & Culture | 6–7 May 2014 |
| Sky Over the East | Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi, UAE | 29 May – 27 June 2014 |
| Here and Elsewhere | New Museum, New York City, USA | 16 July – 12 October 2014 |
| Topographies of the Soul | Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, UAE | 6 December 2014 - 6 February 2015 |
| Al Seef | Contemporary Art Platform, Kuwait City, Kuwait | 11 January - 31 March 2015 |
| Home Ground | Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Canada | 15 July 2015 - 3 January 2016 |
| Imperfect Chronology: Arab Art from the Modern to the Contemporary | Whitechapel Gallery, London, England | 8 September 2015 - 8 January 2017 |
| The Short Century | Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE | 23 April - 24 December 2016 |
| The Sea Suspended | Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran, Iran | 8 November – 23 December 2016 |
| Hurufiyya: Art & Identity | Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt | 30 November 2016 - 25 January 2017 |
| Chefs-D'œuvre de L'Art Moderne et Contemporain Arabe | Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, France | 27 February - 25 June 2017 |
| Lines of Subjectivity: Portrait and Landscape Paintings | Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts, Amman, Jordan | 9 March - 31 May 2017 |
| Modern Art From the Middle East | Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, USA | 24 February - 16 July 2017 |
| No to the Invasion: Breakdowns and Side Effects | Hessel Museum, New York, USA | 24 June - 29 October 2017 |
| Between Two Rounds of Fire, The Exile of the Sea | Katzen Arts Center, Washington DC, USA | 5 September - 17 December 2017 |
| From Across the Distance: Select Video Works by the Barjeel Art Foundation | Burlington City Arts Center, Burlington, VT, USA | 13 April - 10 June 2018 |
| A Century in Flux: Highlights From the Barjeel Art Foundation | Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE | 12 May 2018 - 12 May 2023 |
| Taking Shape: Abstraction From the Arab World, 1950s-1980 | Grey Art Gallery, New York City, NY, USA | 14 January - 13 March 2020 |
| Taking Shape: Abstraction From the Arab World, 1950s-1980 | McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Boston, MA, USA | 25 January - 6 June 2021 |
| Taking Shape: Abstraction From the Arab World, 1950s-1980 | Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL, USA | 30 September 2021 - 16 January 2022 |
| Taking Shape: Abstraction From the Arab World, 1950s-1980 | Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA | 10 February - 12 June 2022 |
| Taking Shape: Abstraction From the Arab World, 1950s-1980 | Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA | 22 September - 4 December 2022 |
| Landscape of Memory: Seven Installations from the Barjeel Art Foundation | McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Boston, MA, USA | 30 January - 4 June 2023 |
| Kawkaba: Highlights from the Barjeel Art Foundation | Christie's, London, UK | 17 July - 24 August 2023 |
| Parallel Histories | Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE | 20 September 2023 - present |

## Gallery

* Jewad Selim's Mother and Child sculpture (1953) made from macassar ebony and metal wire in two figurines, on display at the Art Institute of Chicago in Gallery 393. Photo by Matthew S Witkovsky / ARTIC
* Recto-Village (1923), Mahmoud Sa'id, Egypt
* Standing Figure and Child (undated), Khalil Gibran, Lebanon
* Nubian Girl (undated), Ervand Demerdjian, Egypt
* Icons of Moudarres (1962), Fateh Al Moudarres, Syria
* Untitled (undated), Kamel Moustafa, Egypt
* The Road to Jerusalem (2017), Khaled Hourani, Palestine
* The Hero (1963), Mahmoud Sabri, Iraq
* A Wolf Howls: Memories of a Poet (1968), Dia Azzawi, Iraq
* The Bathers (1964), Ahmed Nesha'at Al Zuaby, Syria
* Untitled 105, Armen Agop, Egypt