When the boundary of Dubai skimmed the Creek and camels wandered through the desert beyond, when the Dubai Police Band paraded through the city on National Day, and when the expat community numbered about 2,000 – that’s when Alison Collins and her now late husband settled in the emirate.
That was in 1976, and two years later they moved into a wind-tower house in Al Fahidi (formerly known as Bastakiya) and raised their family there.
Collins was as passionate about art then as she is today, so when a travelling artist by the name of Julian Barrow knocked on her door in 1979, she offered him bed and board in exchange for his paintings.
“He was a wonderful painter,” she remembers. “I had always had a fascination with Orientalist painting and it was as if Julian was an extension of their spirits. His work was like a travelogue of a fast-disappearing world.”
Collins moved all the furniture out of the family majlis and into the garden to make room for his paintings, and invited friends over to see them. And so the foundations of Majlis Gallery, the first established gallery in the UAE, were built.
Original article by Anna Seaman
Continue reading at The National:
Celebrating 25 years of Dubai’s Majlis Gallery
Comments
Facebook
Twitter
Contact
Elan.tv
Comments