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Culture Ministry Launches ‘1727’ Competition to Mark Saudi Founding Day

The Ministry of Culture
The Ministry of Culture
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Culture Ministry Launches ‘1727’ Competition to Mark Saudi Founding Day

The Ministry of Culture
The Ministry of Culture

The Ministry of Culture has announced the launch of the ‘1727’ competition, featuring a prize pool of 100,000 Saudi riyals on the occasion of Saudi Founding Day.

The competition, open to the general public, started Thursday and will run through Saturday. It entails a series of questions related to the establishment of the Saudi state by Imam Muhammad bin Saud in 1727 AD.

Participants will encounter eight diverse questions divided into four phases, with two questions per phase, focusing on the cultural and historical aspects of Founding Day.

Participants who correctly answer all questions, progressing through all phases, will qualify for a prize draw. Randomly, 100 winners will be chosen, each receiving 1,000 Saudi Riyals.

The competition is part of numerous activities and events presented by the Ministry of Culture to commemorate Founding Day, a source of immense pride for all Saudis. These events aim to engage all segments of society throughout the Kingdom.

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Hong Kong Museum Puts Picasso in Cross-cultural Dialogue

Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP
Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP
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20
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Hong Kong Museum Puts Picasso in Cross-cultural Dialogue

Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP
Artworks by Pablo Picasso are pictured during the media preview of 'Picasso for Asia: A Conversation' at M+ in Hong Kong. May JAMES / AFP

More than a century ago, Pablo Picasso smashed the Sacre-Coeur Basilica in Paris into a web of tangled lines on his canvas, deconstructing reality with the brushstrokes of a master cubist.
At a Hong Kong exhibition opening Saturday, that painting will be shown alongside a more literal form of destruction -- a "gunpowder drawing" by Chinese-born artist Cai Guo-Qiang -- as part of a cross-cultural exchange, AFP said.
"Interest in (Picasso's) life and work hasn't subsided at all, including in Asia" in the half-century since his death, said Doryun Chong, artistic director and chief curator at the M+ museum.
The show will pair more than 60 masterpieces loaned from the Picasso Museum in Paris with around 130 works by Asian and Asian-diasporic artists.
Highlights include "Portrait of a Man" from Picasso's Blue Period, a 1937 horse head sketch for "Guernica" and "Massacre in Korea", a 1951 expressionist anti-war painting.
"Exhibitions on Picasso tend to be very monographic," said Chong, who co-curated the event.
"We felt that it's more productive for understanding Picasso... that we create these unexpected juxtapositions and dialogues."
Cecile Debray, president of the Picasso Museum in Paris, hailed the approach as being "decentered from the Western point of view".
The last major Picasso showcase in Hong Kong, a more straightforward affair, took place in 2012 and drew huge crowds.
In the intervening decade, Picasso's reputation has been dented by the #MeToo movement as critics decried his abusive treatment of wives and girlfriends.
"We are of course very open and honest about the rather disturbing aspects of his biography, but we also shouldn't let that determine the meanings of his whole career," Chong said.
Hong Kong officials have touted the four-month exhibition as part of "Art March", hoping that high-brow events at museums, fairs and auction houses can boost the city's international appeal.
Since opening in late 2021, M+ has seen more than eight million visitors -- a bright spot for Hong Kong's loss-making West Kowloon Cultural District.
Chong said the museum connects visual culture between Asia and the world, citing the example of how Picasso is placed next to self-taught local painter Luis Chan.
Chan, who drew ample inspiration from the Spanish master, was "of the older generation when formal training in art was not possible in Hong Kong".
"Still he felt connected to the center of the art world at the time in Paris, and the very important figure in that context (that is) Picasso."