July-August 2009

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David Khalili puts most collectors to shame. In an age in which so many rich men call themselves collectors and seem more interested in displaying their wealth than the art they have acquired through it, Khalili has done rather more than simply raise a paddle in the saleroom. During the almost 40 years in which he has been buying works of art – his collection now runs to some 25,000 pieces, including the world’s largest and most comprehensive holding of Islamic art in private hands – he has pursued a policy of acquisition, conservation, exhibition and publication.

‘To be a collector you need time, patience, knowledge, understanding and passion, and a feel for colour, form and shape. But that is only the first step,’ Khalili tells me: ‘You have to make sure you give each object its identity – so you research it – but you only make that identity permanent by publishing it and you give an object life by showing it.’ We meet in the palm-fringed Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, on the eve of the opening of the latest – and largest – show drawn from the collection: ‘The Arts of Islam’.

The exhibition is, astoundingly, the first major comprehensive display of Islamic art ever seen in the Middle East, as well as the largest Islamic show staged anywhere. An extended version of a show staged at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney last year, it has – revealingly – been chosen by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage as the exhibition to launch Abu Dhabi’s entry onto the international arts exhibition circuit. Under the patronage of HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, it marks the ‘soft opening’ of the extraordinary, visionary cultural initiative of Saadiyat Island, just off the coast, which will transform the capital of the United Arab Emirates into an architecturally thrilling global cultural hub. The first of its museums, which include Frank Gehry’s outpost of the Guggenheim, Jean Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi, Tadao Ando’s maritime museum, Foster + Partners’ Sheikh Zayed National Museum, as well as a performing arts centre designed by Zaha Hadid, are set to open in 2012-13.

To date, Ottoman art from the Khalili Collection has been exhibited in Geneva, London and Jerusalem, as well as 13 American museums. Decorative arts from Meiji-period Japan in the collection have similarly toured Europe, the US and Japan; the collection of Swedish textiles has been shown in Malmö, while the Spanish damascened metalwork opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum before touring Spain. As to the task of researching and publishing the extensive collections, 17 out of the projected 27 volumes have been completed by a team of international scholars, and all have been published by the Khalili Family Trust’s Nour Foundation. Documenting the collections has cost around £5m. As well as a chair in Islamic art and architecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, Khalili has also endowed the Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East at the University of Oxford.

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