EDITORIAL Hans Belting /// Why the Museum? New Markets, Colonial Memories and Local Politics

In March of this year, the Dubai Art Fair, a subsidiary of Dubai’s International Financial Centre (DIFC) organized a three day “Global Art Forum” which was curated by Maria Finders, from Brunswick Arts. Surprisingly, one of the sections was introduced as “The next ten years of contemporary art in the middle East”, as if they could be planned in advance. A commentary clarified that the title implied two questions. How will Contemporary Art affect the Middle East in the next ten years? Or how will the Middle East affect Contemporary Art? Contemporary Art, as we may conclude, has become synonymous with Global Art which the forum meant to promote in the Middle East. Culture, we read, “is becoming an economic driver”. Since everything in the desert state is created ex nihilo, also Global Art is on their agenda for inventing a global city.