In the summer of 2018, London became an unlikely but fitting stage for one of the most significant cultural celebrations of Kahlil Gibran in recent memory — a West End musical premiere and a major art exhibition at Sotheby's, both opening within days of each other, both drawing on Gibran's enduring power to speak across cultures, faiths, and generations.
Kahlil Gibran Collective · August–September 2018
Kahlil Gibran: A Guide for Our Times — exhibition at Sotheby's Mayfair, London, August 2018. The Kahlil Gibran Collective was in attendance.
It is not often that a single city, in a single summer, hosts two major cultural events dedicated to the same artist. But in August 2018 — as The Prophet marked its 95th year in print — London did exactly that. On the 1st of August, a new musical based on Gibran's 1912 novella Broken Wings opened at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in the West End. Five days later, Sotheby's Mayfair opened its doors to Kahlil Gibran: A Guide for Our Times, a touring exhibition featuring works by 38 contemporary artists from across the Middle East, each inspired by Gibran's poetry, art, and philosophy. The Kahlil Gibran Collective attended both.
Broken Wings, which ran from 1 to 4 August 2018 at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, is an autobiographical musical account of Gibran's first love — a story he told in his 1912 Arabic novella of the same name, one of his most personal and emotionally raw works. The stage adaptation, written by Middle Eastern duo Nadim Naaman and Dana Al Fardan, was directed by Bronagh Lagan with orchestrations by Joe Davison and produced by Ali Matar.
The story opens in New York City in 1923 — an ageing Gibran narrating from his cold Greenwich Village studio. Through poetry and music, he transports his audience back two decades and across continents to turn-of-the-century Beirut, where his eighteen-year-old self has returned from five years in America to complete his education and discover more of his heritage. There he falls deeply in love with Selma Karamy, the daughter of a respected local businessman — only to watch her become betrothed to the nephew of a powerful bishop with designs on the Karamy family fortune.
The production wrestles with themes that remain urgently contemporary: gender equality, the freedom to love, tradition versus modernity, wealth versus happiness, immigration, and the idea of home. It is a story of thwarted love, but also of the formation of a poet — of the grief and injustice that would fuel the moral fire of everything Gibran went on to write.
The production received enthusiastic notices. Nick Wakeham of MusicalTheatreReview.com awarded it five stars, describing the songs as "hauntingly beautiful, powerful, moving and superbly performed."
Book: Nadim Naaman · Music & Lyrics: Nadim Naaman & Dana Al Fardan · Orchestrations: Joe Davison · Director: Bronagh Lagan · Producer: Ali Matar
Amal Nasr — Love, 2018. Acrylic on canvas. From Kahlil Gibran: A Guide for Our Times.
From 6 to 10 August — free and open to the public — Sotheby's Mayfair galleries hosted Kahlil Gibran: A Guide for Our Times, a touring exhibition organised by CARAVAN, the international peace-building arts movement founded by the Reverend Canon Paul-Gordon Chandler. The show had previously appeared in Bahrain in March and Cairo in April and May, before arriving in London with a larger selection of new works for its most prominent showing yet.
The exhibition brought together 38 contemporary artists from across the Middle East — painters, photographers, and mixed-media artists — each responding in their own way to Gibran's enduring themes. The works ranged from intimate reinterpretations of his most celebrated portraits to wide-ranging meditations on his spiritual message of love, unity, and freedom. All works were available for sale, with proceeds directed to peace-building charities.
The exhibition was co-curated by Janet Rady and Marion Fromlet Baecker, and sponsored by Barclays Bank Middle East / North Africa. Its vision grew from Chandler's book In Search of a Prophet: A Spiritual Journey with Kahlil Gibran, published the previous year — itself a product of years of engagement with Gibran's legacy across the Middle East and beyond.
Writing in The National, journalist Nick Leech captured the broader significance of the moment: that Gibran's name now adorns schools in Morocco and New York, that a Gibran Chair for Values and Peace exists at the University of Maryland, that his life has been turned into an animated Hollywood film — and yet his words, nearly a century old, still speak to people at weddings and funerals, in times of war and grief, in ways that no literary establishment has ever been able fully to explain or dismiss.
"I think more than ever there is a need to hear voices that call us to unity and respect," Chandler said of the exhibition. "I think Gibran is that voice."
Exhibition coverage originally reported by Denise Marray (Arab News) and Anna Seaman (Artlyst). Musical coverage based on the original KGC post and press materials from BrokenWingsMusical.com. Further reading: Nick Leech, "Lebanon's Most Famous Son: Why Kahlil Gibran's Words Are Still Prophetic Today," The National, August 2018.
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