In the years following his architecture studies in Alexandria, Mecca-born Mohamed El Farsi worked as an architect for the government in 1963. He was quickly promoted to the post of “Planning Officer for the Kingdom of Western Saudi Arabia” and by 1972, he became the mayor of Jeddah, holding office until 1986. In this period (particularly during the 1970’s) Farsi led one of the largest commission and acquisition sprees of public art in the Arab world. The city of Jeddah boasts – since the inception of its early planning – some four hundred artworks, many of which are becoming the subject of contemporary scholarly interest. The acquisition included works by renowned artists, some of whom visited the city, including Henry Moore, Aref El Rayyes, Alexander Calder, Joan Miro and others. The collection was developed closely with the late Spanish artist and architect Julio Lafuente. The renewed interest in the work, both by the city of Jeddah and its burgeoning art milieu, as well as scholars, is part of the attention that is lacing the symbolic capital that the Arab Gulf is amassing around the institutions of art – claiming new stakes through art markets and museums. The historic context in which Farsi developed Jeddah’s open-air museum, and vested the city with this iconic cache of modernist artworks, denotes an interest in a type of globalism through aesthetic strategies within urban space. This inquiry is vested in the common stories and myths around the sculptures of Jeddah, and the evolving historiography of this under-recognized body of public works.