UK signs cultural deals with Saudi Arabia

The UK has signed a bilateral agreement with Saudi Arabia in which its culture, heritage and tourism sectors will work with the Kingdom to help it become ‘a global visitor destination’. The announcement came on 9 December, the same day the British prime minister Keir Starmer met Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Riyadh. In one part of the deal, still to be finalised, Historic England will partner with the Saudi Heritage Commission to preserve cultural landmarks in Saudi Arabia and encourage best practices among experts in both countries. Meanwhile, in a five-year arrangement, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Business and Trade will share expertise with the Royal Commission for AlUla, home to the archaeological site of Hegra – the first Saudi Arabian site to be put on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. A third partnership involving the British Council has also been agreed.

It has been a busy month for the Saudi Arabian cultural sector. The French culture minister, Rachida Dati, and her Saudi Arabian counterpart announced a series of joint agreements after President Macron’s first State visit to the Kingdom at the beginning of the month. In one initiative, Saudi Arabia is to give the Centre Pompidou €50m for its refurbishment – which will cover a fifth of the projected costs. Other measures include the National School of Photography in Arles supporting the development of a new photography museum in Riyadh, and the Centre des monuments nationaux and the Opérateur du patrimoine et des projets immobiliers de la Culture (OPPIC) working on the restoration of Saudi heritage sites, including royal palaces. The Grand-Palais RMN and the École nationale supérieure de Création industrielle will also be involved with the creation of new museums in Saudi Arabia. The announcements build on an existing 10-year agreement from 2018, in which France will play an exclusive role in creating a series of museums in AlUla, in a deal thought to be worth potentially tens of billions of euros.

Sotheby’s has laid off more than 100 employees from its office around the world, reducing the company’s 1,800-person workforce by some 6 per cent, reports the New York Times. The redundancies, which have affected both junior and senior staff, come after relatively poor results in the November sales in New York, which were 50 per cent down on 2023. It is the company’s second round of redundancies in 2024 – it is thought to have laid off around 50 workers in the London office in May – despite the recent injection of more £1bn in funds from Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ. (The New York Times reports Sotheby’s statement that ‘more than $800m was immediately used to pay down its own $1.65 billion debt’.) The staff cuts come after a big expansion in the company’s real estate. Sotheby’s purchase of the Breuer Building in New York went through this year; it also opened a new Paris headquarters and a ‘maison’ in Hong Kong and has announced an outpost in the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh.

Zoé Whitley is stepping down as director of the Chisenhale Gallery in east London after nearly five years in the role, reports the Art Newspaper. Whitley was previously at the Hayward Gallery and the Tate Modern, where she co-curated ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power’ in 2017, and at the Victoria and Albert Museum for a decade before that. She was also curator of the British pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale. After leaving Chisenhale Gallery in March 2025, she plans to be an independent curator and writer again.