Exhibiting modern art in Baghdad started as an independent endeavor outside of any official structures or institutions. Lacking the infrastructure to promote modern art, it had become popular to exhibit in private homes with the establishment of the "Friends of Art" in 1941. Nevertheless, the first exhibition of Jemaat al-Ruwad (The Pioneer Group, SP) in 1950, initiated a more structured system of exhibitions that would become more regular and vibrant with Jemaat Baghdad lil Fann al-Hadith (the Baghdad Group of Modern Art) for the rest of the 1950s and most of the 1960s. More importantly, these exhibitions signaled the artists' awareness of the need for artistic and intellectual gatherings to construct a new culture capable of sustaining innovation in art. It thus initiated their role as key players in encouraging modern art and influencing public taste within the Baghdad middle class culture. Modern Iraqi artists during the 1940s and 50s were instrumental in creating art consciousness and interest in Baghdad that instigated a culture that appreciated and collected modern Iraqi art before an official institution was established. Iraqi modern art became an important identity marker for Iraqis. This alternative unofficial artistic gathering persisted as the main format even after the founding of the Gulbenkian Museum in 1962, which served as the Iraqi National Museum of Modern Art until the establishment of the Saddam Center for the Arts in the 1980s, along with a new structure of official exhibitions, such as Maaridh al-Hizb, the Baath Party exhibitions. This paper examines and historicizes this notion of alternative salons in establishing a different norm in Iraq within an evolving socio-political culture, and its role in developing an emerging middle class interested in Iraqi art as a national product, which in turn initiated the desire to collect. Moreover, the system had a decisive role in the trajectory of modern art in Iraq.