The Moving Museum — AYAMOUSAWI+CO

The Moving Museum was co-founded and Directed by Aya Mousawi as a global art project that sought to redefine the relationship between local art scenes and global practitioners through a traveling programme of contemporary art exhibitions in significant geographies across the world. It held projects in Dubai, Istanbul, and London comprising large-scale exhibitions, artist residencies, public programming, publishing, artwork commissions, and digital programming. Artists were invited through a collaborative curatorial model composed of contributors from various disciplines. Over 50 new artworks were commissioned over three years across a range of media including works by Tai Shani, Amalia Ulman, Broomberg and Chanarin, Hannah Perry, Hito Steyerl, Jeremy Deller, Jeremy Bailey, James Bridle, Michael Rakowitz, Tom Sachs, Ryan Gander, Mai-Thu Perret, Slavs and Tatars, Zach Blas, Anne de Vries, Ben Schumacher, Ming Wong, and Lucky PDF. Many installations and artists went on to win prestigious art prizes and be presented in global institutions including the Venice Biennale Golden Lion Award to Haig Avazian; the Turner Prize to Tai Shani; Whitechapel Gallery, and Tate Modern.

Project: The Moving Museum

Year/s: 2012-2015

Location/s: Dubai, London, Istanbul

PRESS

Financial Times
The Duo Behind The Moving Museum, Gareth Harris

This non-profit venture promises something rather more radical. [...] Mousawi and Sakhai set up the Moving Museum last year as a community interest company. Any profits generated by the young trailblazers must subsequently be “used for the public good”, according to government guidelines... The exhibitions benefit the diverse communities linked to each city stint, with education outreach programmes, workshops and performances forming part of the package.

The Independent
In the frame: A new generation of gallerists is making its mark on a changing art world.

The brainchild of Sakhai and Mousawi, both 26, the Moving Museum is a new kind of organisation that blurs the boundary between a commercial gallery and a public institution. It doesn't represent artists but produces exhibitions alongside major art fairs and funds its not-for-profit activity by selling works

London Evening Standard
- New exhibitionists: Meet the London curators reinventing the way we consume art.

Back in the real world, they also host a nomadic programme of contemporary art shows — in London, New York, Dubai and Istanbul, with Los Angeles next in their sights... The duo are part art gurus, part production managers, as happy debating conceptual intricacies as they are rattling off the square footage of each of their projects.

Art Basel Magazine
A Museum for the New Millennium, Mark Ellwood

20-some-things Sakhai and Mousawi already had impressive art-world résumés. Together, the pair found themselves equally fascinated by two cultural trends: first, the vogue for pop-up projects, whether shops, galleries or food trucks, and the second, the rise of fairs and biennials, which have elbowed aside brick-and-mortar galleries and museums to take center stage on the art circuit.

Bloomberg Business
Meet The Art Museum That Will Follow You Around The Internet

Together the two founded the Moving Museum, which is based on the belief that a modern art institution can exhibit anything, anywhere—including online. [...] They began the project just three years ago, and in the short space since they have staged pop-up projects in Dubai, London, and Istanbul. Each show asked an invited group of artists to produce work in response to their local surroundings.

GQ
Art as a moving Target and the Moving Museum is an intervention

‘Art is a moving target and the Moving Museum is an intervention.’ The idealistic duo behind the Moving Museum combine local and international markets for a completely new kind of show. The name on the lips of anyone in the art world interested in life beyond the market is the Moving Museum. Its first exhibition, held at the same time as last May’s Art Dubai, surely the most unlikely place to launch a not-for-profit “alternative model to support contemporary art practice”, was a surprise hit.

artnet news
The Moving Museum Tears Down Tired Institutional Conventions

Carried by the two antithetical words of its name, the Moving Museum has, from the moment it was launched by Aya Mousawi and Simon Sakhai in 2013, set out to challenge the art world’s die-hard categories. It’s an “institution” without a collection, without a building, one that doesn’t hesitate to sell artworks if it means more artists can be supported.

Harpars Bazaar
Meet The Art Museum That Will Follow You Around The Internet

Together the two founded the Moving Museum, which is based on the belief that a modern art institution can exhibit anything, anywhere—including online. [...] They began the project just three years ago, and in the short space since they have staged pop-up projects in Dubai, London, and Istanbul. Each show asked an invited group of artists to produce work in response to their local surroundings.

GQ
Art as a moving Target and the Moving Museum is an intervention

‘Art is a moving target and the Moving Museum is an intervention.’ The idealistic duo behind the Moving Museum combine local and international markets for a completely new kind of show. The name on the lips of anyone in the art world interested in life beyond the market is the Moving Museum. Its first exhibition, held at the same time as last May’s Art Dubai, surely the most unlikely place to launch a not-for-profit “alternative model to support contemporary art practice”, was a surprise hit.

Frieze Magazine
The Moving Museum, Istanbul

Contemporary art is often what occupies spaces after commerce has departed, or is yet to arrive [...] The ambitiousness of the The Moving Museum’s programme is staggering. The artist roster reads as a who’s who of internationally mobile bright young things, largely associated with Post-internet art.

The New York Times Magazine
Meet The Art Museum That Will Follow You Around The Internet

The Moving Museum is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: an artistic institution that is perpetually on the go. Founded by Aya Mousawi and Simon Sakhai, it launched in May 2013 with a show in Dubai. [...] As part of the museum’s continuing effort to “respond to a city through artistic practice,” the duo has now headed to Istanbul, both for its bubbling political energy and its geographic and cultural location on the boundary between east and west.

Soho House Magazine
Art Movers and Shakers

It was their most recent exhibition in Istanbul in 2014 that cemented The Moving Museum’s reputation as a light-footed heavy weight in the art world, a new-generation art institution for an increasingly global audience. […] A renowned institution with no fixed abode, a heroic community effort that climaxes then dismantles itself.