Over 120 objects from Yemen on view
Sheikha Hussa Sabah Salem al-Sabah, daughter of the eleventh Emir of Kuwait who led the country from 1965 to 1977, and widow of Sheikh Nasser Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah (1948–2020), who served as Minister of Defense, is a prominent figure in the world of art and culture. A passionate admirer of mid-20th-century abstract art, she is an honorary academician of the prestigious Florentine Academy of the Arts of Drawing—a descendant of the Compagnia di San Luca, which counted Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo among the members. Together with her husband—who passed on to her both the joys and the burdens of collecting—she assembled a vast and valuable collection of pre-Islamic and Islamic art that includes over 30,000 items: from weapons and armor to calligraphy, carpets, textiles, coins, ivories, hardstones, jewelry, glassware, manuscripts, miniatures, metalworks, stone or stucco sculptures, and wood carvings, covering a period from the fourth millennium BCE to 800 CE.
Sheikha Hussa Sabah Salem al-Sabah, together with her husband, assembled a collection of pre-Islamic art comprising over 30,000 pieces
"Being collectors is much more than admiring and desiring a beautiful artifact; it involves time and study. We soon felt the responsibility to share with a wider public the aesthetic expressions of a civilization. Aware of the social role of the collection, we transformed what began as a personal hobby into a cultural institution: the Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah Foundation."
A treasure trove of one of the world’s foremost Islamic art institutions, the museum is dynamic and receives loan requests from across the globe. Touring exhibitions have brought parts of the collection to the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan in New York, and to Berlin, Paris, Madrid, St. Petersburg, Sydney, and in Italy, to the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome. The exhibition “The Art of Ancient Arabia: The Legacy of Our Ancestors” in Kuwait City, curated by Sabina Antonini and Christian Robin, presents over 120 objects from the al-Sabah Collection, primarily originating from the region of Yemen. “It all began with a fascination for history, for art, and above all, for beauty(…) This was the path of my husband, a visionary collector. At first, Nasser looked eastward to explore the influence of ancient cultures on the art of the Islamic lands he so loved. However, in the end (…) he found it here, in the cradle of Islam, in the land of ancient South Arabia.”
The artifacts span a timeline from the fourth millennium BCE to 800 CE.
Every great journey begins with a first step. If the collection began with an enameled glass bottle from the mid-14th century, discovered by the Sheikh in a London art gallery in 1975, today the displayed pieces stand as a rich testament to an artistic heritage that continues to influence contemporary art and culture. The exhibition, which opened last February at the Amricani Cultural Centre, features a set-up curated by FormaUbis by Luca Facchini and Federico Dei Rossi, a specialized museum design studio in Treviso. The exhibition layout enhances the value of the artifacts by creating elegant and understated spaces that respect the ancient, while making use of modern technologies.
The al-Sabah Collection rekindles a desire to connect with the treasures of the past, which reconstruct the history of aesthetics in Islamic civilization, with the belief that art is a space for growth and exchange, and that the human responsibility to make the world a better place also passes through dialogue and the sharing of beauty.
The first purchase in London in 1975: an enameled glass bottle from the mid-14th century.
