Art Gallery

The NYUAD Art Gallery is an intimate museum space in a university setting. Modelled on the academic museums of the US, the curatorial program explores locally relevant and internationally significant subjects. This model of scholarly, experimental, and non-commercial art exhibitions complements and enhances the region’s fast-growing cultural ecosystem.

A second venue, the Project Space, located in The Arts Center, is a vital part of the Gallery’s identity, serving as a laboratory for experimentation, with priority given to exhibitions from within the academic and regional community, including the annual Senior Capstone Festival, faculty-curated exhibitions, experimental projects, and the work of regional emerging artists.

In addition, the NYUAD Art Gallery department oversees the Campus art collection, and a number of special projects, such as the annual Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award in partnership with the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF), under the Patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Shamsa bint Hamdan Al Nahyan.

The Gallery’s central museum space, auxiliary Project Space, and annual Christo Award are core catalysts for NYUAD as a locus of intellectual and creative activity, linking the university with the Abu Dhabi public and a worldwide community of artists, curators, and scholars. Supporting the progress made by other arts institutions within the UAE, the NYUAD Art Gallery and the projects its team oversee serve as a testing ground for new and innovative curatorial approaches that nourish the dialogue around exhibition practice in the Gulf.

Leader Profile

Maya Allison is the founding Executive Director of the Art Galleries, as well as Senior Research Scholar and Chief Curator at New York University Abu Dhabi. In addition to her curatorial work at NYU Abu Dhabi, she has curated beyond the museum context in the UAE on multiple occasions and was honored to be appointed by the UAE for the Venice Biennial as curator of their 2022 pavilion for the solo project by Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim. 

She also serves the UAE community in a number of roles, including as a founding member of the Advisory Board for the Ishara Art Foundation (ongoing), as jury member for the Louvre Abu Dhabi's Richard Mille Art Prize (2024-present), and as a member of the Advisory Board of Archaeology and Art History Department at the Sorbonne Abu Dhabi University.

Before relocating to the UAE in 2012, she held curatorial posts in the university museums of Brown University (the Bell Gallery) and Rhode Island School of Design (The RISD Museum). Alongside those posts, she also directed Pixilerations, an annual city-wide exhibition of new media. 

She has edited, authored, and contributed to a number of books on topics related to her exhibition research. She edited the first monograph on Syrian-American sculptor Diana Al-Hadid, and likewise on Swiss installation artist ZIMOUN. She authored a series of studies of the UAE’s art history, based on original research and oral histories, starting with But We Cannot See Them: Tracing a UAE Art Community, 1998-2008 (2017) and Artists and the Cultural Foundation: The Early Years (2018). For her most recent monograph, Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim: Between Sunrise and Sunset (2022), she co-edited with Cristiana de Marchi and published on the occasion of the UAE Pavilion, which she curated at the Venice Biennale. 

Key People