For most of the year, many of the works in the Dubai Collection hang in private homes. For two weeks, they move into public view.
Dubai Collection Nights has returned for its fourth edition, offering access to artworks normally held behind closed doors through an exhibition, studio visits and collection tours across the city.
Running until March 8 with an expanded 14-day programme, and organised by Dubai Culture & Arts Authority in partnership with Art Dubai Group, the initiative centres on the Dubai Collection, a long-term loan-based public collection built from privately held modern and contemporary artworks in Dubai and the wider region.
This year’s event is anchored at Al Safa Art & Design Library, which serves as the main venue for the programme.
The two-week series opens with In Attunement, an exhibition curated by Jumanah Abbas that draws on works from the Dubai Collection to explore abstraction and geometry in relation to memory, place and material process.
The exhibition is inspired by Dubai Collection’s 2026 theme, Mapping Memories: Landscapes in Flux and Geometries of the Imagination. The presentation brings together artists from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, examining how artistic practices circulate within the collection, and how abstraction can reflect landscapes and cities in formation.
Among the artists featured are Emirati conceptual pioneer Hassan Sharif, Palestinian-American abstractionist Samia Halaby, London-based Bangladeshi minimalist Rana Begum and Lebanese sculptor Chaouki Choukini, with works held from various Dubai-based collections. Syrian artist Moustafa Fathi's Untitled (2000), for instance, is part of Dubai Ruler Mohammed bin Rashid's collection.
Abbas says the exhibition draws directly from its setting inside a public library. She structured it around how knowledge is organised and shared, and how abstraction can operate as a method of recording place.
The first section looks at how artists map landscapes through line and geometry, reducing hills, rivers and city grids into structured compositions. The second centres on what Abbas calls “materials as a record”, focusing on how wood, printmaking, pigment and found objects can function as documents of lived experience.
“What does a line carry? Does it carry memory?” Abbas says. “What does geometry become when it accumulates different political and social forces and then becomes a record of the cities that we know or the landscapes that we remember?”
In several works, materials carry specific geographic and personal references. Sculptural forms translate topography into carved volumes. Printed surfaces register political and urban histories. In some groupings, large-scale pieces are positioned to create a direct encounter between viewer and artwork, shifting the sense of who is observing whom.
The exhibition places artists from different generations and regions in proximity, allowing shared approaches to abstraction and material process to emerge across the space.
Citywide access to private collections
Dubai Collection Nights extends beyond the exhibition space through a series of guided tours and visits that reflect the collection’s loan model.
Launched in 2021, Dubai Collection operates by bringing works from private collections into a shared public framework through long-term loans. It comprises more than 1,200 works, which are accessible through its digital platform as well as through curated programming and exhibitions.
As part of this year’s programme, visitors can tour the studios of Dubai Collection artists Hazem Harb and Saif Mhaisen. There are also scheduled visits to grassroots initiative House of Arts, a corporate collection visit at ARM Holding, and a patron-hosted home visit offering access to works typically held in private settings.
Panels and workshops
Panel discussions at Al Safa Art & Design Library will address themes including patronage, collecting, curatorial practice and the preservation of cultural memory.
Participants include art historian Nada Shabout and curator Suheyla Takesh, alongside collectors and cultural leaders involved in the initiative.
Workshops form another key strand of the programme. Emirati artist Sarah Almehairi will lead a session focused on geometry and abstraction, while children’s workshops and a reading session with Myrna Ayad aim to introduce younger audiences to artistic composition and regional art histories.
Unlike traditional institutions, the Dubai Collection does not operate from a single permanent museum building. Instead, it functions through partnerships, temporary exhibitions and digital access, allowing works held in private care to be shared with a wider public.
Registration and the full programme are available through the Dubai Collection website.
