Myrna Ayad To Step Down As Director Of Art Dubai

After two years as the director of Art Dubai, Myrna Ayad announced that she will be leaving the position this August, citing “personal” reasons.

“[T]he time has come for me to pursue my own projects,” she told The Art Newspaper, adding that she plans to establish her own art consultancy, assisting brands, organizations and individuals with “cultural strategy and production,” including projects ranging from publishing to organizing symposia.

Benedict Floyd, chief executive of the Art Dubai Group, commented: “We are grateful to Myrna for her contribution as a director of the fair and, in particular, she was pivotal in the success of the Art Dubai Modern Symposium, which she launched whilst at the fair. We wish her all the best in her professional and personal endeavors.”

An active, influential arts writer and consultant in the Middle East region, Ayad took up her current position at Art Dubai in 2016, succeeding Antonia Carver, who is now the director of non-profit arts organization Art Jameel. 

As director of Art Dubai, Ayad reinvigorated the Modern section of the fair, launching the Art Dubai Modern Symposium—a series of talks and presentations centered on the lives, works and cultural impact of important 20th century artists of the region—in the 2017 edition of the fair. Ayad commented that her experience at the helm of the art fair has been “rewarding and enriching.”

The Modern section will be merged with the Contemporary section for the 2019 edition, bringing another major change to the fair’s layout. Art Dubai will also launch a new section called “Bawwaba” in Gallery Hall 2 of the Contemporary section, open to established and emerging artists from or whose works center on the Middle East, Africa, Central and South Asia, and Latin America.

Details of the new director for Art Dubai are yet to be released.

Pamela Wong is an editorial intern of ArtAsiaPacific.

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