Regional conflict continues to affect the UAE’s cultural calendar, disrupting airspace, travel and touring schedules.
Across the country, though, the response has largely been one of continuity, flexibility and a determination to keep cultural life moving.
In the art community, galleries are continuing exhibitions and public programming even as artist travel, shipping and collector behaviour become less predictable. Some have extended shows or adjusted plans, while others are pressing ahead with modified events.
“At moments like this, it feels important to sustain spaces for reflection and engagement,” Kwame Mintah of Efie Gallery tells The National.
Sunny Rahbar of The Third Line describes the community as “close-knit” at the moment, while Maryam Al Falasi of Iris Projects says there has been “an immediate, almost instinctive shift towards mutual support”. Find more here.
A similar spirit is shaping the live events industry, with organisers moving dates rather than cancelling outright, as flight delays and shipping issues complicate plans for large-scale shows.
Abu Dhabi’s Offlimits Music Festival has been pushed back from April to November, with Shakira and the Jonas Brothers still set to perform at Etihad Park, while Christina Aguilera’s show at Etihad Arena has moved from April 24 to September 25.
Across the UAE, promoters are rescheduling fairs, summits and concerts while keeping tickets valid and working around travel plans and venue availability.
In Abu Dhabi, institutions are also finding new ways to bring in audiences. Abu Dhabi is offering guests staying two nights or more at participating hotels complimentary access to Louvre Abu Dhabi, Zayed National Museum and Natural History Museum Abu Dhabi, widening access to Saadiyat Cultural District.
Saadiyat Island is hosting Athar Festival this week, adding another public-facing cultural moment to the calendar.
As Rasha Khalifa Al Mubarak writes, protecting the arts “is not simply a cultural responsibility. It is a human one.”
In the UAE this week, that commitment has been visible across the cultural sector, as galleries, organisers and institutions continue to make space for expression, gathering and continuity through uncertainty.
How Abdulrahman Bukhatir gave the UAE its cricketing soul
Winning Run, the autobiography of Emirati entrepreneur Abdulrahman Bukhatir, is an extraordinary account of a remarkable life, writes Sultan Sooud Al Qassimi.
Perhaps Bukhatir is best known for helping to establish Sharjah and the UAE as one of the world’s leading cricket venues. The Sharjah Cricket Stadium that he built still holds the Guinness World Record for hosting the highest number of One Day Internationals, and much of his memoir is devoted to the gentleman’s game – its triumphs, as well as its challenges.
What makes the book, published in February, stand out, however, are its personal stories. There is the deep love Bukhatir held for his family, especially his mother, Ghayeh. The book is a reminder, too, of how inseparable the history of the Gulf is from South Asia.
Find more here.
Kurt Russell: 'This is the first role that reflects my own life and love'
The Kurt Russell screen image is so familiar, and so much larger than life, that it is easy to forget how far those characters are from the man himself.
From Snake Plissken in Escape from New York to Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, he has built a career on men who carry a certain weight from the moment they appear. What he had not done, he says, was play someone who felt like the real him.
“I’ve been doing this for 65 years, and I’ve never played a character that was really a lot like me, and this guy is,” Russell tells The National.
Russell plays Preston Clyburn in Taylor Sheridan’s latest Paramount+ drama The Madison, which follows a New York family pulled to Montana after his death.
It is the marriage at the centre of the story that seems to have landed most deeply. Preston and Stacy are written as two people with a long, fully lived-in relationship behind them, and the series is shaped by what that love looks like once one half of it is gone.
That love is part of why he sees himself so strongly in it. He's been madly in love with his partner Goldie Hawn since they first met as children in the mid-1960s – and since they officially got together in 1983, that love has only grown deeper.
“I said, 'you know what? This is the right one to be myself in – to explore myself in.' For me, it speaks to me the way I would want it to be and I think I'm like a lot of men who've lived lives that varied from what it looked like it was going to be. My life became something else because I drove it,” says Russell.
Find more here.
Dates for your diary
Art Dubai at Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai – May 14 to 17
Christina Aguilera at Etihad Arena, Abu Dhabi – September 25
Shawn Cidiac at Coca-Cola Arena Dubai – October 6
Other highlights
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