It has been a true privilege to serve as the curator of Between Two Objects: The Emergence of Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, a retrospective exhibition that tells the intertwined story of The al-Sabah Collection and Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah, tracing fifty years of cultural vision, scholarship, and engagement.

One of the most striking things I discovered while studying the history of DAI was that it never really began as a small project. From its earliest years, it already possessed the ambitions and many of the elements of a fully fledged cultural institution. Alongside the development of the collection came exhibitions, publications, lectures, workshops, research, and educational activities. The objects were being collected and studied, but at the same time they were being used to create knowledge and to engage audiences, both at the Kuwait National Museum and through exhibitions and collaborations internationally.

This richness was also the principal curatorial challenge: how do you tell the story of a living cultural institution spanning five decades without reducing its history to a timeline of events?

The physical space provided the starting point. The exhibition occupies the H Gallery at the Amricani Cultural Centre, whose H-shaped plan naturally creates two parallel corridors connected by a central passage. Rather than work against this existing architecture, I used it to structure the narrative and guide the visitor through the story.

The exhibition begins with the founders, Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah and Sheikha Hussa Sabah Al-Salem Al-Sabah, whose vision lies at the heart of both The al-Sabah Collection and Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah. A wall of fifty highlights then offers visitors an immediate overview of the journey, with one defining moment selected from each year.

From there, the story returns to its beginning: the first object acquired by Sheikh Nasser, the object that marked the birth of The al-Sabah Collection. Almost directly across the gallery, near the other end of the exhibition, stands the last object he added to the collection before his passing. It is in the space between these two objects that the exhibition unfolds. Their placement creates a dialogue across the gallery, and between them lies the story of what was built over those decades.

The first part of that story follows a chronological path. I wanted the 1980s to have a distinct presence because of just how much was accomplished during those formative years. From the establishment of DAI in 1983 until the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, each year is presented almost as a time capsule, capturing an achievement, exhibition, publication, programme, or other moment that demonstrates how quickly the institution developed.

The connecting passage between the two sides of the H Gallery is dedicated entirely to 1990 and 1991. Here, the architecture becomes part of the storytelling. The space gradually tightens as the narrative moves through the invasion, the destruction of the Kuwait National Museum and the looting of the collection. It then begins to open again with liberation and the extraordinary effort to recover and bring the collection home. Rather than treating these years simply as an interruption, the exhibition presents them as a pivotal moment in the history of DAI.

Emerging from this passage, the exhibition shifts deliberately from a chronological to a thematic narrative. The story is no longer primarily about what happened year by year, but about what DAI built, produced, and contributed over the decades that followed.

This part of the exhibition explores the major strands of that work: the development of cultural spaces and the rehabilitation of the Amricani Cultural Centre; the Cultural Seasons and more than thirty years of lectures, performances, and public programmes; and the documentation of this intellectual life through Hadeeth ad-Dar. A dedicated section highlights DAI’s scholarly publications, an extraordinary body of research that has contributed to the study and understanding of objects in The al-Sabah Collection and the wider fields they represent.

The collection itself is explored through an interactive experience that allows visitors to hear directly from curators and specialists. Other sections trace DAI’s travelling exhibitions, which have taken objects from The al-Sabah Collection to audiences and institutions around the world, as well as its educational programmes and the different ways in which the organisation has sought to make art, history, and culture accessible to new generations.

The journey concludes with people. This felt essential because, ultimately, DAI’s history cannot be told through objects, exhibitions, or publications alone. Across an interactive archive of photographs, visitors encounter the many people who have shaped its story over the years and audiences who made it alive. DAI has always been built by people and, equally importantly, built for people.

The exhibition does not attempt to document every event or achievement of the past fifty years. That would be impossible. Instead, Between Two Objects offers a way into that history, a carefully selected journey through the moments, ideas, work, and people that have shaped Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah.

Seeing the project evolve from an initial concept into an exhibition now open to the public at the Amricani Cultural Centre has been an incredible journey. It has also given me the opportunity to look at an institution I have known for many years from an entirely different perspective, and to appreciate more deeply the scale of what has been built and sustained across five decades.

The exhibition was designed by @manmade.studio, who translated this curatorial narrative into a thoughtful and compelling spatial experience, allowing the architecture, objects, archival material, and stories to come together as one journey

Pictures by Mohammad Ashkanani