Elie Khouri, the French-Lebanese philanthropist and entrepreneur, who is readying his contemporary art foundation, the Elie Khouri Art Foundation (Ekaf), to open in 2028 in Dubai, has appointed architect Sumayya Vally of Counterspace to design the foundation. This year, Khouri appeared on ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors list.
The foundation will house its own permanent collection. Although, Khouri’s art collection features paintings by Julie Curtiss and Gunther Förg along with pieces by Carol Bove, Dana Schutz, Kehinde Wiley, and more. He started collecting in the late 2000s by acquiring a work by the Lebanese painter Nabil Nahas. Since then, he has been adding 30 to 35 works every year to his collection. Khouri also sits on Tate’s Middle East and North Africa Acquisitions Committee and the Museum of Modern Art’s Media and Performance Committee.
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“Art belongs in everyday life, not apart from it. My foundation will be a home for contemporary art, open to everyone,” said Khouri in a statement. “A place to inspire, challenge and spark dialogue. Above all, I want to give something lasting back to Dubai and the wider UAE, a country that has given me so much, by helping build a cultural legacy for generations to come.”
Ekaf will be located in Jumeirah 1, where Vally will be transforming an existing villa into a home for the foundation with galleries, pavilions and a garden, as well as hospitality and outdoor spaces.
“I think of buildings as having many lives. At EKAF, we begin with a house that has already held a world within it. Its doors, cornices, balustrades, and particular ways of receiving people and separating rooms contain the traces of another life,” said Vally in a statement.
The South African architect designed the 20th Serpentine Pavilion in 2021, making her the youngest to do so.
In January 2026, the foundation named art consultant Caroline Louca as its director; Louca previously held the position of managing director of Christie’s Middle East. Louca moved to the United Arab Emirates in 2008, helping the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority build its network of museums, including the Louvre Abu Dhabi, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and the Zayed National Museum.
“A building shapes what people do with art before a single work is hung. Our ambition is for EKAF to be a place where art is not only shown but properly looked at, questioned and talked about,” said Louca in a statement. “Architecture has a big part to play in that: how you arrive, how you move from one room to the next, whether you end up in conversation with a stranger. Counterspace treats a building as a place people use, not an object to admire, and that is the instinct we wanted.”
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