Courtesy Sharjah Art Foundation

Marwan Rechmaoui's installation "Beirut Caoutchouc," at DisORIENTations II.

Alexander Calder Willem de Kooning Gerhard Richter Jeff Koons Piet Mondrian Anselm Reyle Brooklyn Museum Names Paul Johnson Deputy Director for Development Jeff Koons Reveals His Art Collection

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In November 2007, the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi launched a contemporary-art fair in conjunction with Art Paris. In 2008, amid the global financial meltdown, the fair experienced such poor sales and low attendance that last June, with the world’s economies still ailing, the French partners canceled the upcoming event. Seemingly immune to the debt crisis and eager to fan the media attention surrounding its estimated $27 billion Saadiyat Island cultural complex, where the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and Louvre Abu Dhabi are now under construction, the emirate directed its Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC) and the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADCH) to launch their own fair. Billed as a "cultural platform," the hastily assembled — and thus all the more impressive — Abu Dhabi Art, which ran from November 19 to 22, featured such blue-chip galleries as Aquavella, L & M Arts and White Cube, plus an array of panel discussions, exhibitions and design workshops. Although some events appeared to have been recycled from recent editions of Art Basel, they were fresh to the region. There was also a stellar patrons committee, among whose members were Norman Foster, the architect of the emirate’s soon-to-be-built Zayed National Museum and the zero-carbon city, Masdar; Jeff Koons, whose large sculpture Diamond (Red) (2006), anchored the Gagosian Gallery’s stand; François Pinault, the megacollector and owner of Christie’s; and Anupam Poddar, India’s leading collector of contemporary art. What role the patrons played no one involved would say, which only added to the event’s air of mystery.

Most of the top exhibitors, who traveled with prized inventory pieces to this far-flung destination, may be assumed to have expected to make major sales to the TDIC and ADCH or to the ruling al-Nahyan family, although Rita Aoun-Abdo, the TDIC’s cultural-division head, denies that assurances were given. Dealers certainly didn’t seem fazed by the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s claim that its acquisitions committee was still being formed, possibly because they were satisfied that the Louvre Abu Dhabi was actively buying. Last February the museum paid nearly $28 million for Mondrian’s 1922 Composition with Blue, Red, Yellow and Black at the Saint Laurent-Bergé sale.

Yet without some firm faith that sales would be made, how could galleries justify the cost of transporting some of their most valuable works so far in this economy? PaceWildenstein, for instance, spent some $100,000 to ship Alexander Calder’s monumental 1969 mobile Ordinary. Priced at $45 million, it didn’t sell, but another of the gallery’s Calder mobiles, the $8.5 million La douche, did find a buyer, which was rumored to be the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

As to the emirate’s elite, it has only begun to take an interest in art. To demystify the field for all the novice aficionados from menasa — the acronym for the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia region — a panel discussion was held on collecting in which the usually elusive überdealer Larry Gagosian participated.

New collectors were also targeted by some smaller exhibitors, such as London’s Waterhouse & Dodd, which brought art priced from $5,000 to $1.1 million. According to Ray Waterhouse, he sold "a lot" and received two commissions from state entities, one for a series of "hyperphotos" of the monumental Sheikh Zayed mosque by photographer Jean-François Rauzier.

At fairs like Art Basel, most big sales happen on the first day; here deals weren’t finalized until the last hours, and exhibitors remain cagey about them. Gagosian has announced the sale of a Willem de Kooning painting and a work by Anselm Reyle but won’t say to whom. Hauser & Wirth reports that an Asian collector acquired a Roni Horn sculpture and another buyer a Gerhard Richter. Thaddaeus Ropac, who says he sold the TDIC a Tony Cragg sculpture and a Philip Taaffe painting and that another collector is interested in commissioning a Cragg, deems the fair "a good experience, but difficult. There are a lot of middlemen. . . . [Were it not for the TDIC sales], we wouldn’t be as happy."