Art, Culture, Museums & Galleries
Overview Bahrain’s culture is as old as Enki the Sumerian water god who thousands of years ago chanted, “Let the city of Dilmun become the port for the whole world.”
Jasra Craft Center, image by Reem Tawfiqi
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ahrain, formerly known as Dilmun was a historical trading port. Ancient Indus Valley and Mesopotamian traders arrived in Dilmun to trade copper and returned home with Dilmun seals featuring stylized animals and feasting gods. Kassite, Assyrian, Greek, Parthian and Portuguese invaders in turn built their settlements and contributed to the island’s growing encyclopedia of pottery and artifacts. Tarafah ibn al ‘Abd (549AD) was Bahrain’s first recorded poet. Over the last two centuries,
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Best of Bahrain
under the ruling Al-Khalifa family, Bahraini artists, architects and poets enjoyed their hiatus on the world stage to quietly develop their own Bahraini perspective. In the 1970s, painter and sculptor Rashid Al Oraifi inaugurated his private museum and cofounded the Contemporary Art Society. Photographer Khalifa Shaheen, star of the Disney film Hamad and the Pirates, opened the predecessor to KSDi. Poet Hameed Al Qaed published Lover in the Era of Thirst in Arabic. In 1983, the Government
funded the non-profit Bahrain Arts Society. President and artist Sheikh Rashid bin Khalifa Al Khalifa along with thirty-four preeminent Bahraini artists held their first exhibit. The Bahrain Annual Fine Art Exhibition has run continuously for 37 years. The Government of Bahrain later added The Heritage Festival in 1992, Book Fair in 1997 and the International Sculpture Symposium in 2006. The Indian community sponsors classical Indian dance and plays. Several internationally recognized painters, ceramists, glass-
artists and photographers live in Bahrain and sell their works to private collectors. Fuelled by informal art studios, a vigorous trade of amateur artists’ works takes place in private villas, cafés and small galleries. But Art is not limited to visual arts. Free to the public, in 2012 the Bahrain International Music Festival will host its 22nd year of classical music. The Bahrain Police Force Band performs for formal occasions. Classical Arab, Indian and Western music is played in hotel ballrooms and at corporate and embassy functions.