At last week’s Art Dubai — the UAE’s answer to Miami’s Art Basel — government censors played a larger than expected role in policing the display of contemporary art.

While researching my next thriller novel, I dropped by the four day festival at the Jumeirah Beach Resort. The festival was meant to display the United Arab Emirates as an emerging force in yet another market: the contemporary art world.

But as various gallerists were asked to remove certain pieces of work at the opening on Tuesday night, minutes before the arrival of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Maktoum, there was a crack in the city’s western veneer, an ominous thundercloud of political censorship out of Dubai’s clear desert sky.

Read more at the Huffington Post about how censorship showed itself in the UAE.

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