Art · Era early 1900s
XVA Gallery
Since 2003, XVA has turned a restored courtyard house into one of the Gulf's most respected homes for contemporary art from the Arab world, Iran and the subcontinent. Paintings and installations hang in whitewashed rooms opening onto the courtyard, a small art hotel occupies the upper floor, and the shaded café below serves a famously good vegetarian menu. Wander in from the sikka and you may leave following a new artist — or at least carrying a mint lemonade.
Art Between Three Courtyards
Some galleries hang art on white walls; XVA folds it into a century-old house. Opened in 2003 by Mona Hauser in a lovingly restored wind-tower residence — once home to the Seddiqi family — XVA is three things braided together: a contemporary art gallery, a small art hotel, and a shaded courtyard café.
The gallery came first, and it remains the heart of the place. Its mission is to showcase contemporary art from the Middle East and its diaspora, and exhibitions rotate through rooms that once held bedrooms and stores. Then there is the hotel: a handful of individually designed rooms upstairs, each shaped with a different designer or artisan, sitting beneath the house's original wind towers. And finally the café, spread across the courtyards and famous for its calm — a pocket of shade and stillness a few minutes from the bustle of the Creek.
The building deserves as much attention as the art. Look up at the wind towers, run a hand along the thick gypsum-coated walls, and notice how the courtyards pull cool air and soft light into every room, exactly as they did when a merchant family lived here.
Come for a single exhibition and you may stay for hours. This is the district's whole argument in miniature: old houses don't have to become silent museums — they can simply keep on living.