Sumayya Vally to Design Elie Khouri’s Dubai Art Foundation

By Daniel Okafor

Elie Khouri’s art foundation will open in Dubai in 2028, with Sumayya Vally of Counterspace appointed to design its home in Jumeirah 1.

Khouri, the French-Lebanese philanthropist and entrepreneur behind the foundation, made the appointment. According to the foundation, Vally will transform an existing villa into galleries, pavilions, a garden, hospitality areas and outdoor spaces.

This is a conversion, not a blank-slate commission. The collection’s scale comes through repetition.

What will the foundation collect?

Khouri began collecting in the late 2000s with a work by Lebanese painter Nabil Nahas. He has since added 30 to 35 works every year.

Among the works named by the foundation:

• Paintings by Julie Curtiss and Gunther Förg
• Pieces by Carol Bove, Dana Schutz and Kehinde Wiley

Khouri sits on Tate’s Middle East and North Africa Acquisitions Committee and the Museum of Modern Art’s Media and Performance Committee. He also appeared on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list this year.

“Art belongs in everyday life, not apart from it. My foundation will be a home for contemporary art, open to everyone.”

“A place to inspire, challenge and spark dialogue. Above all, I want to give something lasting back to Dubai and the wider UAE, a country that has given me so much, by helping build a cultural legacy for generations to come.”

— Elie Khouri, in a statement

The programme joins a private collection to a public setting, with the villa intended to welcome everyone. Khouri’s annual purchases give the institution a regular rhythm rather than dependence on one exceptional acquisition.

How will Vally reshape the villa?

Vally, a South African architect, designed the 20th Serpentine Pavilion in 2021. The commission made her the youngest architect to design it.

She described the foundation as a building with several lives, beginning with a house that has already held a world within it.

“I think of buildings as having many lives. At EKAF, we begin with a house that has already held a world within it. Its doors, cornices, balustrades, and particular ways of receiving people and separating rooms contain the traces of another life.”

— Sumayya Vally, in a statement

The villa already has doors, cornices and balustrades. Vally also points to its particular ways of receiving people and separating rooms. Her design brief is as much about circulation (how visitors move through rooms) as display.

Who will direct the foundation?

The foundation named art consultant Caroline Louca as its director in January 2026. Louca previously served as managing director of Christie’s Middle East.

She moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2008. At the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority, she helped build a network of museums, including:

• Louvre Abu Dhabi
• Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
• Zayed National Museum

Louca set out the operating principle in unusually direct terms.

“A building shapes what people do with art before a single work is hung. Our ambition is for EKAF to be a place where art is not only shown but properly looked at, questioned and talked about.”

“Counterspace treats a building as a place people use, not an object to admire, and that is the instinct we wanted.”

— Caroline Louca, in a statement

The route from arrival to the next room will shape encounters with art and with strangers. The 2028 opening will test Louca’s stated ambition: art shown, properly looked at, questioned and talked about. The villa will have set the terms before the first work hangs.