Christie’s to Hold Its First Abu Dhabi Fine Art Auction

Twenty years after Christie’s became the first international auction house to hold a sale in the United Arab Emirates, the house is marking the anniversary by moving its gavel down the road.

On November 1, Christie’s will hold its first fine art auction in Abu Dhabi, offering more than 70 works of modern and contemporary Middle Eastern and North African art at the Abu Dhabi Edition hotel. Titled “MAWASIM: 20 Years of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art,” the sale includes works by Paul Guiragossian, Samia Halaby, Mohamed Melehi, Marwan Kassab-Bachi, Inji Efflatoun, and Nabil Nahas, among others.

The auction would be notable enough as an anniversary. Christie’s held its inaugural UAE auction in Dubai in 2006, becoming, according to the house, the first international auctioneer to stage a sale in the region. But the decision to celebrate that milestone in Abu Dhabi comes as the country’s capital city is rapidly adding a commercial art market to the cultural infrastructure it has spent the past two decades building.

Sotheby’s established a new presence in Abu Dhabi last year, which the auction house has described as part of a “long-term commitment” to collectors in the region. Its inaugural program begins this month and culminates in Collectors’ Week in early December, with auctions of jewelry, watches, cars, and real estate, along with a fine art exhibition ranging from Old Masters to contemporary art.

Then there is Frieze. From November 19–22, the inaugural edition of Frieze Abu Dhabi will bring 84 galleries from 64 cities across 37 countries and regions to Manarat Al Saadiyat. The fair, established in partnership with Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism, builds on Abu Dhabi Art’s 17 years of activity in the emirate and includes international galleries such as Gagosian, Pace, Thaddaeus Ropac, and Timothy Taylor alongside dealers from the UAE and the wider region.

Christie’s anniversary, therefore, arrives at a particularly busy moment. When the auction house held its first few UAE sales in Dubai in the mid-aughts, plans for Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Cultural District were only beginning to take shape. Twenty years later, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is firmly established there and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is scheduled to open on December 11, alongside Frieze’s and Sotheby’s activity on the city. (It’s worth noting that in 2024 ADQ, the Abu Dhabi–based sovereign wealth fund, dropped $1 billion into Sotheby’s war chest.) In a release, Christie’s called the present moment a “20-year arc” coming full circle.

There are also signs that collectors have developed a growing appetite for the artists Christie’s will be offering. Last November, the house’s London sale of works from the Dalloul Collection brought £4.1 million ($5.4 million), with 93 percent of the sale sold by value and 85 percent by lot. More than half of the lots sold above their high estimates, and eight auction records were set during the evening. Perhaps more tellingly for a category looking to expand its collector base, 38 percent of buyers were new to Christie’s, 21 percent of whom were millennials.

There were some remarkable results throughout the sale. Saloua Raouda Choucair’s Poem, from 1966–68, sold for £393,700, or 363 percent above its high estimate, while Sliman Mansour’s Untitled, from 2014, brought £323,850, or 80 percent above its high estimate. Kamal Boullata’s Nocturne I sold for £165,100, more than triple its high estimate.

The coming Abu Dhabi sale offers another test of that demand. Among its top lots is Guiragossian’s monumental Noces (Wedding) from 1958–59, estimated at $300,000 to $500,000. Halaby’s 1978 abstraction Yesterday carries an estimate of $200,000–$300,000, as does Marwan’s Kopf (Head), from 1987. Melehi’s A30, painted in 1962 during the Moroccan artist’s years in Rome, is expected to bring between $100,000 and $150,000.

Several of the consignments also come from collections that have played a role in preserving and promoting modern Arab art. Eight works are being offered from Beirut’s Dalloul Collection, while five come from the Barjeel Art Foundation in Sharjah; both of its leaders Basel Dalloul and Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi, respectively, rank on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list.

“This year marks twenty years since Christie’s inaugural Modern and Contemporary Art auction in Dubai,” Meagan Kelly Horsman, managing director of Christie’s UAE, said in a statement, pointing to the “growing recognition of artists from the Middle East internationally” during that period.

For much of those two decades, Dubai and Abu Dhabi occupied somewhat different positions in the UAE’s art ecosystem. Dubai developed a substantial gallery and art fair scene, while Abu Dhabi embarked on an enormous museum-building project centered on Saadiyat Island. That distinction now looks less tidy, especially given that Christie’s, which helped establish Dubai as an auction center two decades ago, is choosing Abu Dhabi for an anniversary sale built not around familiar Western trophy names, but around artists from the MENA region. Whether Christie’s intends to make fine art auctions in Abu Dhabi a regular occurrence is unclear—but its choice of city is a telling one.