The Concrete Dreams of the Red Sea: Jeddah’s Museum Without Walls

The Red Sea air along the Jeddah Corniche is thick with salt and possibility. It carries the ancient scent of trade routes and pilgrimage, mingling with the hum of modern supercars and the distant, melodic call to prayer. Here, where the desert meets the sea, one does not expect to stumble upon a casual conversation between some of the 20th century’s greatest artistic minds. Yet, there it is: a colossal bronze by Henry Moore frames the horizon, a whimsical Joan Miró totem stands against the pastel sky, and a kinetic Alexander Calder mobile seems to dance with the sea breeze. This is the Jeddah Sculpture Museum, a gallery with no roof and no walls, a startling and magnificent testament to a city’s audacious dream.

To walk through this open-air collection is to walk through a chapter of Jeddah’s history that is both intensely personal and globally significant. It is a story not of a building, but of a vision—the singular, driving passion of one man who sought to transform his city’s public spaces into a canvas for the world. This was the work of Dr. Mohamed Said Farsi, the mayor of Jeddah from 1972 to 1986, a figure whose ambition was as vast as the landscape he aimed to beautify.

The Vision of a Renaissance Mayor

In the early 1970s, as the oil boom began to reshape the Arabian Peninsula, Jeddah was a city on the cusp of metamorphosis. For centuries it had been the primary port of entry for pilgrims heading to the holy city of Makkah, a bustling, cosmopolitan crossroads. But the newfound wealth brought with it the risk of unchecked, soulless development. Dr. Farsi, an Egyptian-born engineer educated in Alexandria and the United Kingdom, saw something more for his adopted home. He envisioned a process he called “Jeddahfication,” a holistic urban plan that prioritized not just roads and infrastructure, but aesthetics, identity, and civic pride.

Dr. Farsi was no ordinary bureaucrat. He was a passionate art collector, whose personal acquisitions would later form the nucleus of a formidable private collection. He believed that art should not be confined to elite, indoor spaces but should be part of the daily life of every citizen. It was a radical idea for its time and place. He began to use the city’s beautification budget—and often his own connections and persuasive charm—to acquire art on a monumental scale. He famously approached the great British sculptor Henry Moore directly, beginning a correspondence that would lead to the acquisition of several major works, including the iconic Oval with Points. He traveled the world, visiting artists in their studios and bidding at prestigious auction houses like Sotheby’s, securing pieces from masters of European modernism.

His project was an act of cultural bridge-building. By placing works by artists like Jean Arp and Victor Vasarely along the city’s main thoroughfares and roundabouts, he was initiating a dialogue between Western artistic traditions and the unique cultural landscape of Saudi Arabia. It was a bold move, subtly challenging perceptions by integrating abstract and even figurative forms into the public sphere of a society rooted in non-representational Islamic art.

A Gallery Forged by Oil and Ambition

The collection that began to dot Jeddah’s landscape in the late 1970s and early 1980s was staggering in its scope. It was as if a wing of the Tate Modern or the Centre Pompidou had been airlifted and gently scattered along the coastline. There was César Baldaccini’s gigantic, surreal bronze, Le Pouce (The Thumb), a quirky, monumental wink to pop art. Nearby, the geometric precision of Victor Vasarely’s Op-Art sculptures created dazzling illusions under the harsh Arabian sun, turning a simple roundabout into a dizzying vortex of color and form.

But Dr. Farsi’s vision was not exclusively Western-facing. He was equally dedicated to championing the voices of Arab and Middle Eastern artists, providing them with a platform of unprecedented scale and visibility. He commissioned works from Egyptian modernists like Mustafa Senbel and Salah Abdulkarim. Senbel’s series of colossal sculptures, known as The Verse, are among the most profound in the collection. These majestic, abstract forms evoke the hulls of ancient ships or celestial bodies, their surfaces inscribed with a single, powerful verse from the Quran about the creation of the universe. In these pieces, the fusion of modern sculptural language and deep Islamic heritage is seamless and breathtaking.

For decades, these sculptures stood as silent, magnificent sentinels of the city. They became familiar landmarks, woven into the fabric of daily life. They weathered sandstorms and endured the relentless coastal humidity, their bronze patinas deepening and their marble surfaces slowly being etched by the saline air. They were a source of pride, wonder, and for some, puzzlement—a grand, eclectic, and slightly wild outdoor exhibition.

The Toll of Time and the Tides

By the turn of the millennium, however, the years of exposure had taken their toll. The unforgiving seaside climate—a combination of intense UV radiation, airborne salinity, and abrasive, wind-blown sand—is notoriously harsh on outdoor art. Bronze pieces suffered from corrosion, painted steel began to flake and rust, and delicate stone works showed signs of erosion. The vibrant colors of a Vasarely had faded, and the polished surfaces of an Arp were dulled. The very elements that made their setting so dramatic were now threatening their existence. The grand vision was at risk of slowly dissolving back into the landscape.

The city recognized that its unique cultural treasure was in peril. A new generation of patrons and civic leaders understood that preserving this legacy was as important as its initial creation. What was needed was not just a clean-up, but a full-scale, scientific restoration—a second act of patronage to honor the first.

A Modern Renaissance: The Restoration and Rebirth

That second act came in the form of a landmark collaboration between the Jeddah Municipality and Art Jameel, a private organization dedicated to supporting arts and culture. Beginning in 2011, a meticulous project was launched to save the collection’s most significant works. International conservation experts were brought in to assess the damage and devise bespoke restoration plans for each sculpture. The process was a painstaking labor of love and science.

Bronze sculptures were carefully treated to remove corrosive layers and restore their original patinas. Rusted steel was stripped and repainted using advanced marine-grade coatings. Each piece was studied, documented, and given a new lease on life. But the project went one step further. Rather than returning the restored works to their scattered locations in the city’s traffic circles, a decision was made to bring twenty-six of the most iconic pieces together in one dedicated, curated space. In 2013, this consolidated collection was unveiled as the Jeddah Sculpture Museum, a purpose-built parkland on the Middle Corniche.

Today, to visit the museum is to experience Dr. Farsi’s vision as he might have ultimately wished. The sculptures are no longer just urban decorations but are presented as they deserve, in a tranquil, landscaped park where they can be appreciated without the distraction of traffic. A walk through the park is a journey through modern art history. You can stand before Henry Moore’s three-tonne Three-Piece Reclining Figure No. 1 and contemplate its powerful, organic form against the backdrop of the endless Red Sea. You can marvel at the delicate balance of an Alexander Calder stabile, its red metal fins cutting a sharp, elegant line against the blue sky. You can trace the calligraphy on Mustafa Senbel’s work and feel the profound connection between faith, art, and the natural world.

The museum’s location on the bustling Corniche places it at the very heart of modern Jeddah. It is a space of democratic beauty, free and open to all. On any given evening, you will see families spreading out picnic blankets on the manicured lawns, children playing in the shadows of masterpieces, and residents strolling along the waterfront paths. It exists in effortless harmony with the life of the city around it—the luxury boutiques of the nearby Boulevard shopping district and the vibrant energy of the Red Sea Mall are just a short drive away, a reminder of Jeddah’s contemporary commercial pulse. Yet here, in this quiet green space, art provides a different kind of nourishment.

The Jeddah Sculpture Museum is more than a collection of artworks; it is a story of a city’s belief in the power of beauty. It is the legacy of a mayor who saw a blank canvas where others saw only sand and asphalt. It remains a powerful symbol of Jeddah’s identity—a city that has always looked outwards, welcoming the world to its shores, and that had the audacity to invite the world’s greatest artists to leave their mark upon its heart.