About

Saleh Barakat

Saleh Barakat is a Beirut-based gallerist who specializes in modern and contemporary art from the Arab world. He founded Agial Art Gallery (1991), and Saleh Barakat Gallery (2016) where he hosts an extensive program of exhibitions and events. He has also curated exhibitions elsewhere, including The Road to Peace (2009) at the Beirut Art Center, retrospectives of Saloua Raouda Choucair (2013), Shafic Abboud (2013), Michel Basbous (2014), and Jean Boghossian (2015) at the Beirut Exhibition Center, and Gebran Tarazi (2017), and Afaf Zurayk (2019) at Saleh Barakat Gallery and he co-curated the first national pavilion for Lebanon at the 52nd Venice Biennale with Sandra Dagher, as well as the itinerant exhibition Mediterranean Crossroads, in collaboration with Martina Corgnati and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has lectured at Princeton University, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, British Museum, and Christie’s Education in Dubai, and currently lectures at USJ and ALBA. He served on the steering committee of the Arts Center at the American University of Beirut, and on the founding committee of the Saradar Collection. He has been a board member of the National Unesco since 2015, and currently serves on the advisory board of the School of Architecture and Design at the Lebanese American University. In 2006, he was nominated as a Yale World Fellow.