Art Memento Exhibition

The Art Memento Exhibition is a visual art exhibition organized by the Ministry of Culture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It showcases artistic and heritage artifacts and paintings by Saudi artists, presented over the past five decades in contests and exhibitions held by the General Presidency of Youth Welfare (currently known as the Ministry of Sport). These initiatives have now been transferred to the Ministry of Culture.

The Art Memento Exhibition showcases the rich evolution of visual art in the Kingdom through a diverse collection of works created by talented Saudi visual artists. The exhibition is currently hosted at the National Museum in Riyadh, having first opened its doors from September 27 to November 6, 2021.

The Art Memento Exhibition documents the visual arts and their evolution in the Kingdom. It is a way to preserve the history of artists, art pioneers, and masters, and celebrate their efforts. Furthermore, the exhibition illustrates the journey of the various art genres in the Kingdom, including the evolution of ideas, themes, and forms.

Throughout its sideshows, the Art Memento Exhibition displays some of the iconic artworks by selected artists. Its main shows highlight a set of chosen artworks that document and narrate the local journey of the visual arts and their evolution. During its opening hours, the exhibition also welcomes art lovers and pioneers to weekly sessions to stir conversations on related topics.

Art Memento Exhibition revives the artistic heritage and narrates the development journey of the visual arts and its evolution in the Kingdom. The exhibition also maintains the history and rights of the entities, institutions, and individuals who created and worked on these artifacts. Selected works illustrate the organizational movement of visual arts, which were subject to the General Presidency of Youth Welfare (currently the Ministry of Sport), and were then assigned to the Ministry of Culture. The latter is the main incubator for visual arts and its pioneers in the Kingdom.

The Ministry of Culture hosts the Art Memento Exhibition to document the history of visual art in the Kingdom, offering its audience a chance to view such works in a related context. The exhibition narrates the steps of artistic development in the Kingdom in terms of forms, themes, and ideas, and celebrates the efforts of pioneer artists and founders alike.

The selected artworks displayed in the exhibition reflect the organizational progression of visual arts that were managed by the General Presidency of Youth Welfare (currently the Ministry of Sport) and later entrusted to the Royal Commission for Riyadh City. The latter inventoried, organized, and documented these works., before maintaining and delivering them to the ministry, as the incubator of arts, to display and archive them as the visual history of arts over the past five decades. The exhibition showcases a selection from this collection that illustrates the evolution of Saudi art.