Saudi Arabia’s secret plans to unveil its hidden da Vinci and become an art-world heavyweight
The kingdom has kept the world’s priciest painting out of sight — fuelling mounting questions about its fate. Now, answers are starting to emerge.
Saudi Arabia sparked one of the art world’s biggest mysteries when it paid $US450m ($645m) for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” painting three years ago. Since then, the kingdom has kept the world’s priciest painting out of sight — fuelling mounting questions about its fate.
Now, some answers are starting to emerge. The kingdom’s new Ministry of Culture plans to keep the masterpiece in storage until it can build a new museum to unveil it, according to people familiar with the matter.
The plans — kept secret until now — are part of a multibillion-dollar push by the Saudis to become a major international art destination, the scope of which hasn’t been previously revealed.
Over the next decade, the government intends to build more than a dozen major art institutions, plus more smaller ones, in hopes of attracting tourists and adding as much as $27 billion to the country’s economy, says Hamed bin Mohammed Fayez, deputy culture minister. The Saudis have previously disclosed plans to build a handful of museums, but haven’t outlined the scale of their ambitions. The added cultural infrastructure is one part of a broader, estimated $64 billion campaign to overhaul the country’s economy and reputation.
But perhaps surprisingly, the Saudi government doesn’t want da Vinci’s famous painting to be seen as the star of the country’s arts campaign. Some of its cultural leaders say they don’t want attention to overwhelm the other works they want to showcase, including a strong focus on Saudi culture and Islamic art.
“It’s an issue of perception. What does it say about Saudi identity if we put that painting on a poster?” says Stefano Carboni, chief executive of the ministry’s new Museums Commission. He says he has been mulling a plan to build a museum of Western art in which to potentially display the da Vinci, next to another museum focused on Islamic art.
Ambivalence over the presentation of a da Vinci masterpiece points to broader tensions surrounding Saudi Arabia’s cultural identity. The 500-year-old portrait depicts Christ with his hand upraised, in a gesture of blessing — a potentially provocative subject for a country that prides itself on being the birthplace of Islam. And despite recent efforts at social liberalisation, criticism of the country’s human rights record has dogged some initial efforts to draw international art tourists.
“We were a closed country for so long, and now we have a chance for people to get to know us,” says Mr. Fayez. “A lot has been written about one particular painting, but we have to focus on the huge things we’re trying to do.” Saudi Arabia’s arts push is part of an effort led by 34-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to diversify an oil-dependent economy and liberalise social customs. A few years ago, art itself was taboo, as were movie theatres, operas and rock concerts — and now all are becoming more common.
Officials are undaunted by the coronavirus pandemic, the oil crisis and austerity measures, saying their plans are long term and will continue despite the current hit to global tourism. “Culture doesn’t stop with COVID-19,” Mr. Fayez said. “We are not pausing but pressing forward.” Since the crown prince’s father King Salman rose to power in 2015, Prince Mohammed has ended many social restrictions, but he has continued to take a hard line against political critique, sidelining would-be rivals and jailing dissidents. Government agents killed journalist and critic Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018; a CIA assessment concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the killing. Riyadh has denied the crown prince’s involvement.
Within art circles, tensions flared up again earlier this year when curators at the California-based biennial Desert X worked with Saudi and international artists to create an exhibit of temporary art installations in the Saudi desert called Desert X AlUla. Three Desert X board members, concerned over Saudi Arabia’s humanitarian record, resigned in protest after the majority of Desert X’s board voted to support the exhibition.
Amsterdam collector Aarnout Helb, whose Greenbox Museum of Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia contains more than 100 pieces he has bought over the past decade, said he’s glad the country wants to be more open to art-minded outsiders. He remains wary of government support for artists, though. “If I think an artist is making art to suit the government, I won’t buy it,” he says. “I believe the royal family has a genuine interest in art, but you can’t just throw a huge public-relations machine at this. You also need artists to debate and grow.” A culture ministry spokesman declined to directly address potential challenges around political issues but said the country is “implementing numerous initiatives designed to support and provide platforms for creative talent.” He added: “Opening up to tourism and developing relationships with international partners in the art world encourages establishing the kingdom as a cultural destination.” Countries like China and Qatar faced similar criticisms a decade ago when they launched campaigns to bolster their cultural offerings; both are now deemed major art centres.
MBS, as he’s known, tapped Prince Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammed to create and run his country’s first Ministry of Culture — and strengthen ties to the international art world. Prince Bader has been buying heavyweight art at auctions, including works by artists like Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Yayoi Kusama and David Hockney, according to people familiar with his purchases.
It was Prince Bader who placed the winning bid on the da Vinci at Christie’s three years ago. Initially, Prince Bader denied he had gotten the painting. Then he said he had bid as a “friendly supporter” of Louvre Abu Dhabi, a new museum in the neighbouring United Arab Emirates. That museum said it would unveil the painting last year, but never did.
Today, Saudi Arabia is still coming to grips with the blessings and burdens of owning one of the world’s most famous artworks. Fewer than 20 of da Vinci’s paintings survive, and more than a century has passed since the last time one was rediscovered.
Before the Saudis purchased it, “Salvator Mundi” had fallen into obscurity for decades. A pair of New York art dealers noticed it in a Louisiana estate sale in 2005 and sold it to an adviser for a Russian oligarch, who later resold it at Christie’s. The subsequent hubbub over the da Vinci’s history, attribution and record-high sale price only added to the painting’s notoriety.
“If the da Vinci is part of our national heritage, of course we will display it,” said Mr. Carboni, the head of the Museums Commission. But he says the kingdom’s ambitions go well beyond a single Old Master. Mr. Carboni, who once helped run the Islamic department of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and joined the ministry in late February, said he wants Saudi’s museums mainly to appeal to its own citizens while also attracting tourists.
Some of the new museums, the details of which haven’t been previously reported, will explore key elements of the country’s past, like oil, incense, basalt and calligraphy, officials said.
Historically, Saudi art has embodied a mix of Bedouin, Ottoman and European influences and motifs. Modern master Abdulhalim Radwi, who died in 2006, is considered Saudi’s Picasso; his generation gained fame in the 1960s painting cubist cityscapes and tranquil desert scenes that wove in elements of Islamic architecture and Arabic calligraphy.
The generations that followed faced tougher odds after upheavals in 1979, with art schools shuttered and isolated collectives confronted with suspicion or arrest by the religious police, according to artists who say they experienced hostility. Even today, nudity and portraits of Prophet Muhammad remain scarce.
Artists today say they have considerably more creative freedom. Current contemporary stars like Ahmed Mater, Abdulnasser Gharem and Ahmad Angawi are known for using unusual materials like X-ray film, magnets, stamps and microphones that some critics have interpreted as subtle critiques of the government or as ways to address global issues like gentrification and the environment. Riyadh’s Sarah Abu Abdallah recently paid homage to a type of local tomato that’s gone extinct by growing and exhibiting a gallery full of heirloom tomatoes. Jeddah-based multimedia artist Dana Awartani recently laid coloured sand on a floor in an ornate pattern and then filmed herself sweeping it into piles, her long hair uncovered.
“I know the notion of the oppressed Arab woman sells in the West, but it feels fetishistic to me,” said Ms. Awartani, who studied at Central Saint Martins-University of the Arts London. “Being Arab is way more nuanced.” The kingdom is also making a fresh push for heritage preservation. Whereas neighbouring countries like Qatar and the United Arab Emirates largely had to buy or import art to display in their museums, Saudi’s strategy also involves digging up and displaying homegrown artefacts within historic districts like Ad Diriyah as well as in ancient cities along its western coast.
This is particularly obvious in AlUla, a craggy desert area in the country’s northwest best known for its Petra-like rock tombs. The governing Royal Commission for AlUla said it has spent $1 billion in the past two years on revitalisation efforts in the region — with another $3 billion earmarked — to try to transform this once-neglected area into a cultural and tourist destination, including multiple museums.
It was in AlUla where the controversial Desert X exhibition took place earlier this year. Raneem Farsi, the exhibition’s co-curator, invited international mainstays like Emirati artist Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim to participate, but she said Saudi artists like Muhannad Shono and Manal Al Dowayan who want to show their work also deserve a closer look, politics aside.
“Why must politics be linked to everything we create? Artists in America don’t have to defend theirs,” Ms. Farsi said. “The whole argument against us feels like intellectual laziness.” Artists like Mr. Shono say they want to be judged for their art rather than for any broader government actions. For Desert X, Mr. Shono snaked a bundle of 65,000 plastic black oil pipes through a section of sand at the foot of a steep cliff, its tentacles splayed or disappearing into the rocks. Ms. Al Dowayan dug pits in another sandy section and laid trampolines atop the holes — and then invited visitors to jump.
“We’re just trying to have an art scene like everyone else, so why marginalise it?” Ms. Farsi added. “We’re finally initiating a dialogue — come have one.” Saudi Arabia’s New Art Ambitions Jeddah A Red Sea Museum, slated to open in 2022, will look at how diverse cultures and sea trade helped shape Jeddah, the city on the country’s west coast that has long cultivated a quiet but credible art scene.
Mona Khazindar, a ministry adviser who used to direct Paris’s Arab World Institute, said her team is working to open another museum in a Jeddah townhouse that will be dedicated to the “once-overlooked” composer of Saudi’s national anthem, Tariq Abdul Hakim, with displays of his instruments and band uniforms.
Riyadh A Black Gold Oil Museum exploring the global legacy of petroleum will take over a portion of architect Zaha Hadid’s honeycomb-shape King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center. At least 50 pieces have already been bought for the roughly 64,000 square-foot gallery space — including by Eduardo Basualdo, whose work involves suspending meteorite-like black masses in midair — Ms. Khazindar said. Other artists like Muhannad Shono have been commissioned to make new works on site. The ministry still needs to hire a director, but Ms. Khazindar said she has a wish list of 150 pieces “we still want” for its collection, including historic works that reference oil by U.S. artists like Andy Warhol, whose Pop work includes car crashes, and Edward Hopper and Ed Ruscha, who have both painted gas stations.
The country’s 20-year-old National Museum of Saudi Arabia, is also “dated” and will get an overhaul, Mr. Carboni said. The cavernous Riyadh museum, which sweeps in natural history, geology, archaeology, ethnography and the life of the Prophet Muhammad, will get a rethink and its methodology brought up to “international standards,” he added.
AlUla At least seven smaller museums are planned in AlUla, including spaces that will explore ancient life in an oasis and display statues and pottery fragments culled from nearby dig sites. And Allan Schwartzman, who formerly co-led Sotheby’s fine-art division, is a member of the RCU’s advisory board and has been enlisted to help commission new works by contemporary artists for AlUla.
The Wall Street Journal
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