Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art and Saudi Arabia strike deal to collaborate on exhibitions, conservation and more

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) has joined forces with the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) to create a new collaboration for cultural exchange between the US and Saudi Arabia. An agreement between the two organisations was signed on 14 May by Chase Robinson, NMAA’s director, and Abeer AlAkel, the RCU’s chief executive.

The agreement comes on the heels of US President Donald Trump’s visit to Riyadh, during which the White House released a statement praising “Saudi Arabia’s $600bn commitment to invest in the United States”, including a $142bn arms deal with the oil-rich nation.

According to the Smithsonian’s announcement, its partnership with AlUla will focus on Dadan, the ancient Lihyanite and Dadanite civilisations’ capital. A strategic hub along various ancient trade routes, the city became synonymous with the Incense Road, a network stretching from the Mediterranean to India. The Dadan people had their own writing system, deities and practices of worship, including sandstone tombs protected by sculptural reliefs of lions. The Saudi government has made the preservation and marketing of Dadan a priority as a means of promoting national identity and international tourism.

“Over the past two years, our curatorial and conservation teams have been collaborating with their counterparts in AlUla on a plan to research and study recently discovered statues at the site of Dadan in AlUla”, Robinson said in a statement. “We are eager to move into the next stage of our partnership with RCU, which over the next four years will allow us to contribute to the ongoing research in the region, build professional networks and create opportunities for cultural engagement.”

The agreement between the RCU and the de-facto US national museum group covers three categories of activity: joint conservation and research projects spanning archaeology, art, history and science; collaborations on exhibitions and loans of artefacts; and staff exchanges and skills-building in areas including museum management, curatorial research, exhibition design and more in order to “enhance professional expertise”.

“AlUla is home to over 200,000 years of human history,” AlAkel said in a statement, adding that the partnership “will enhance the conservation of AlUla’s heritage and share its significance with the world”.

The Saudi government has forged partnerships with many international cultural organisations—including Unesco, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the California-based Desert X biennial—as well as the French government, as it seeks to establish the AlUla region as a major cultural attraction and tourist destination. Those efforts are all part of the government’s plan, dubbed Vision 2030, to diversify the Saudi economy away from its reliance on fossil fuels. But they have also given rise accusations of art washing—that the kingdom is using culture to launder a reputation for human rights abuses such as the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.