Catherine David, head of the Research and Globalization Department at the Centre Pompidou, is a fervent advocate of redefining artistic modernity as a transcultural phenomenon (see David 2016). In such a critical framework, she invited Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, cofounders of the curatorial platform Art Reoriented,1 to conceive the exhibition “Art et Liberté: Rupture, War, and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948)” stemming from Bardaouil's PhD on the topic (Bardaouil 2016). Intended to tour in several European institutions, the exhibition gathered archives and about 130 artworks mainly unseen in Europe and coming from private collections worldwide, including that of H.E. Sheikh Hassan bin Mohamed bin Ali Al Thani, one of the exhibition's main sponsors. Some of the loans were facilitated by a restoration program initiated by the Centre Pompidou.2
Art et Liberté (Art and Liberty) refers to a group of artists and intellectuals who identified themselves...