Introduction: Art and Cultural Production in the GCC

Abstract

The long-term unsustainability of a hydrocarbon-based economic future has become a major concern for the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and is one of the main driving forces underpinning the search for alternative modes of economic development. Towards this end, some of the GCC states have been making record, headline-grabbing investments in the fields of finance, healthcare, education, sports, and, as concerns this paper, art and culture. The long-term planned –– and unplanned –– effects of state-sponsored art and culture initiatives are yet to be seen, but are moving these nations onto a more public and international stage. A side effect of the GCC states’ cultural investments is a necessary opening up to a future of unexpected –– and often undesirable –– cultural encounters, whether in the classroom, the art gallery, the sports stadium, or the labor office. As nations driven by a desire to be among the region’s leading powers but needing to satisfy their internal conservative components, their greatest test will be their judicious negotiating of the incompatible elements of an increasingly globalized world.