The art collection of His Excellency Zaki Anwar Nusseibeh is one of the most outstanding and extensive privately assembled art collections in the Gulf region and wider Arab world. The collection, which was acquired over the course of more than fifty years, is a distinguished example of Arab collecting. Spanning three centuries of Eastern and Western art, the approximately 700 works include drawings, paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, installation art, and multimedia art.

The collection of drawings and paintings is particularly rich with MENASA art. Included in this collection are works by modern and contemporary artists such as Baya Meheiddine, Sliman Mansour, Hassan Sharif, Farhad Moshiri and M.F. Hussain. The collection also encompasses works by European artists such as David Roberts, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dali.

This diversity is a reflection of His Excellency’s art collecting journey and evolved outlook. He began to collect art in the 1950s, when he was a young student at boarding school in England. Initially, he was drawn to collecting Orientalist paintings, which reminded him of his faraway hometown of Jerusalem, as well as European art more generally. However, he then started to sell much of his Orientalist art to buy modern and contemporary MENASA art when he settled in Abu Dhabi in the 1960s and began to work in the media and culture sectors. That is when he began to look at regional art and develop a passion for it because it resonated, and continues to resonate, deeply with him.

Stemming from his belief that art and art collections “should be available for everyone to see,” His Excellency opened up his Al Ain home (his private museum), where a part of his collection lives, to the Khaleeji Art Museum to photograph and digitally showcase more than 100 artworks that reflect the religion, politics and society of the MENASA and beyond, and themes such as love and conflict. This marks the first time that this vast number of artworks from His Excellency’s collection has been made available to the public at once, and in digital format.