Putting value to a name
A spelling variation may seem like a small problem. To Basel Dalloul, founder of the Dalloul Art Foundation and the Dalloul Artist Collective, it is evidence of a much bigger one. But his drive to solve it begins long before databases, naming authorities, or pricing indices.
The Dalloul story started with a family collection. Basel’s late parents built their focus around what is now recognized as modern Arab art, and from 2013, his father began bringing works the family held in homes around the world back to Beirut. The original ambition was a Pan Arab museum of modern and contemporary art. That museum never materialized, but the laborious work behind it still came to fruition; more than 3,000 works, and with them, an extraordinary body of history needed to be catalogued, researched, and shared.
For years, the Dalloul Art Foundation has been doing precisely that. Along the way, Dalloul began seeing the gaps around the art as clearly as the art itself: artists recorded under multiple names, too few authoritative references, limited market data, and no comparable pricing infrastructure.
His response has been characteristically strategic. The Foundation builds knowledge around the art. The Collective focuses on the artists, representation, and advisory. Now, projects including a naming authority and an Arab art pricing index are pushing that work further.
For Dalloul, increasing the value of Arab art starts well before a sale. First, you build the vocabulary that allows the market to know what it is looking at.