Abu Dhabi is an increasingly important market for Middle Eastern art, with Christie’s seeking a regular auction calendar in the city, says the auction house's chief executive Bonnie Brennan.
It will hold its first fine art sale in the city on November 1, bringing an established London auction to the UAE. It comes during a significant season for Abu Dhabi’s art scene, with Frieze’s first fair in November followed by Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s opening on December 11.
“The market can sustain two centres,” Brennan tells The National. “We can have a moment in London, but we can also have a moment here.”
Mawasim: 20 Years of Modern and Contemporary Middle Eastern Art marks two decades since Christie’s inaugural UAE auction, held in Dubai in 2006. Taking place at the Abu Dhabi Edition hotel, it brings together 70 works spanning nine decades, including pieces from Sharjah’s Barjeel Art Foundation and Beirut’s Dalloul Collection.
Brennan’s ambitions extend to exhibitions and other activity throughout the year. Alongside the Middle Eastern works, Christie’s has brought watches and paintings available through private sales, allowing it to assess collectors’ interests across several areas of its business.
“We would love to have a more regularly scheduled calendar of sales here,” she says.
Brennan also wants to include more Middle Eastern art in other sales, introducing the works to buyers beyond those who already follow the category. Among the artists represented in Mawasim are Samia Halaby and Nabil Nahas, whose paintings she singles out with enthusiasm.
“There’s a great work in the sale that I think any Rothko buyer would love to own,” she says.
Works by Mark Rothko, Wassily Kandinsky and Pablo Picasso have travelled to Abu Dhabi from the forthcoming New York sales. Brennan says collectors in the region are important buyers of Western art, too, giving Christie’s reason to bring a broad selection to the city.
Brennan, who became chief executive in February 2025 after leading its Americas business, is also looking at how younger buyers find their way into collecting. According to Christie’s, millennials and Gen-Z accounted for 47 per cent of its new clients in the first half of 2026.
“They come to the doors of Christie’s or to our website curious, but also driven by their own passions instead of buying Impressionist art because their parents bought it or looking at European decorative arts because that’s what they grew up with,” she says.
Their interests can also develop through the visit itself. Brennan describes someone arriving to look at watches, noticing a painting by Yayoi Kusama and beginning to explore her work. Christie’s is renovating its Rockefeller Centre premises in New York to allow private-sale works and luxury objects to be displayed alongside its painting exhibitions.
The sales of the late Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay’s collection drew 55 per cent of their bidders from people new to Christie’s, Brennan reported in July. The collection included guitars associated with Kurt Cobain and Jerry Garcia. During one auction, she was on the phone with a client who wanted to follow the entire sale.
“It was people high-fiving and hugging each other and celebrating,” she says.
In September, Christie’s announced a dedicated pop-culture division led by Josh Benesh, with multiple annual auctions covering areas including music and film memorabilia. It gives owners of individual objects a regular place to sell, alongside auctions devoted to a single collection.
Benesh is based in the US, although Brennan points to London as the setting for some of Christie’s most successful pop-culture sales.
“We are not limiting pop culture to a region,” she says. “I think we have to be really aware of what those regional points of interest are.”
The aim is to turn that first purchase into a broader collecting habit. “We already know from their behaviour they’re buying cross-category,” she says.
Christie’s reported auction sales of $3.5 billion in the first half of 2026, up 71 per cent on the same period a year earlier. Brennan attributes part of that growth to decisions by owners who can choose when to sell.
“When there’s confidence, it unlocks supply,” she says. While estates regularly provide works that need to be sold, other owners can hold on to their collections until they feel the market is receptive.
Strong results in late 2025 helped persuade those owners to put works up for sale in spring 2026. The May auction of works from the collection of the late publishing magnate SI Newhouse, assembled with his wife Victoria, then provided further encouragement.
Brennan says the results for its Jackson Pollock and Constantin Brancusi works helped persuade other sellers to offer important pieces this autumn, including a Kandinsky brought to Abu Dhabi for viewing before its New York auction. Much now depends on how those Autumn auctions perform.
“We have to get pricing right. The market is savvy and well educated. They know exactly where things should be priced, and so we have to be really smart about building that trust with buyers,” she says.
In Abu Dhabi, Brennan has already held discussions about education and helping people begin building collections. Working with the city’s museums and cultural institutions would allow Christie’s to develop relationships with potential collectors well before their first bid.
“You have to build brick by brick with these new collectors,” she says.
Christie's first fine-art auction in Abu Dhabi takes place on November 1
