Art Dubai opens under new leadership

This year's Art Dubai Fair will be the first fair with Myrna Ayad as the new fair director. The 11th edition of Art Dubai takes place from March 15 to 18, 2017 in Dubai, UAE.

Ayad was appointed as fair director of Art Dubai in 2016, replacing Antonia Carver, who spent six years at the position and who will now become the first appointed director of Art Jameel, a corporation from Saudi Arabia with an outpost in Dubai.

Ayad is a Dubai-based arts writer, editor, and consultant around the UAE. She is the former editor of Canvas magazine, which focuses on art and culture from the Middle East and the Arab world, from 2007 to 2015.

Ayad said the Art Dubai is an engine for the local and regional art scenes and has been playing this role since its beginning in 2007.

Since her appointment, her focus has been on developing and maintaining the fair's collectors, galleries, art practitioners, and institutions, alongside their International Director, Pablo de Val, who is based in London. According to Harper's Bazaar Arabia, Art Dubai this year will feature 92 galleries from 44 countries.

There is a mix of some big galleries well-known on the fair circuit which signs that the fair is taking seriously on an international level and smaller regional set-ups. The fair also introduces the Art Dubai Symposium where the presentations and talks are about on the life, work and cultural impact of 20th-century masters from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

The Global Art Forum will feature around 50 speakers from around the world, including artist Sophia Al-Maria and Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, focusing on the theme Trading Places, looking at the interchange of both material objects and ideas. The fair's commissions program is the performance art of this year with five performances.

There are also two new members on the selection committee and Ayad added that The Art Newspaper will also publish daily papers at Art Dubai, this will be the publication's first venture in the region.

TagsArt Dubai Fair, Myrna Ayad, Fair Director, Art Dubai, Canvas Magazine Editor, Antonia Carver, Art Jameel