Biography
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 he co-curated the first national pavilion for Lebanon at the52nd 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, the British Museum, Christie’s Education, and most of the academic institutions in Beirut. 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 and on the advisory board of the faculty of Literature and Humanities in USJ. In 2006, he was nominated as a Yale World Fellow.
