magpie – Art Performance Design Words: your guide to culture, design and creativity in the UAE

Art Dubai redux

22 April 2026

Art Dubai’s rescheduled and reshaped 2026 incarnation will return to Madinat Jumeirah from 15 to 17 May. It’s being labelled as Art Dubai Special Edition – to cover the changes, but also to acknowledge that this is the fair’s 20th [ … ]

magpie Weekly issue 7.27 / 16 Apr 2026

16 April 2026

This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest The quote: For me, painting is but another word for feeling | John Constable … Art Dubai reborn Art Dubai’s revised attendance list for what is being called a Special Edition features 50 galleries [ … ]

Alserkal’s Art Week expands into a Month

14 April 2026

The good people at Alserkal Avenue are going big on art for the second half of April into May, extending the well-liked Art Weeks into a five-week month that provides a handy run-up to Art Dubai. Alserkal Art Month runs [ … ]

magpie Weekly issue 7.26 / 9 Apr 2026

9 April 2026

This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest The quote: Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important | TS Eliot … War updates Having said only “There will be no deal [ … ]

Theatre of war?

8 April 2026

It might not have escaped your notice that Dubai is about to witness two short play festivals. You might think the world of 10-minute theatre is a bit too circumscribed for this kind of arm-wrestling, but it is happening – [ … ]

magpie Weekly issue 7.25 / 2 Apr 2026

2 April 2026

This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest The quote: We hardly ever realise that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye | Carlos Castaneda … Update Five weeks and counting, and maybe a second [ … ]

Winners (and some losers) in the museum business

1 April 2026

Something over 204 million visitors were recorded by the world’s top 100 museums in 2025, according to the latest attendance rankings collated by The Art Newspaper. There are many caveats in this league table – for instance, “museums that did not [ … ]

magpie Weekly issue 7.24 / 26 Mar 2026

26 March 2026

This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest The quote: Master your instrument, master the music, and then forget all that and just play | Charlie Parker … Update Four weeks into the war, and now comes the rain and the promise [ … ]

magpie Weekly issue 7.23 / 19 Mar 2026

19 March 2026

This week’s editorial musings from magpie’s nest The quote: “In the dark times / Will there also be singing? / Yes, there will be singing / About the dark times” | Bertolt Brecht, Motto … Art sells We have had a happy couple [ … ]

The art market inches back to growth

16 March 2026

In 2025, global art sales hit $59.6 billion – and that’s up by 4 percent year-on-year. The modest increase follows two successive years of decline, though the 2025 total is still well short of the post-Covid 2022 peak of $70.4 billion. So says the tenth annual Art Basel [ … ]