Top 200 Collectors

Basel Dalloul founded the Cairo-based Noor Group in 1999. Now a major information technology company providing various internet-related services, Noor offered the first internet dialup service in Egypt and the surrounding region, and Dalloul continues to serve as the company’s CEO. Prior to Noor, Dalloul founded another early internet start-up, called Magnet Interactive Group, Inc., which provided multimedia web services and solutions to major companies like Microsoft, America Online, IBM, Mercedes-Benz North America, Nissan, Harvard Business School, Eastman Kodak, Bayer, Kellogg’s, M&M/Mars, Citibank, Bank of America, and Twentieth-Century Fox. Dalloul completed his undergraduate studies in finance at American University in Washington, D.C., and holds an M.B.A. and J.D. from Georgetown University.

Dalloul is the son of Ramzi Dalloul and Saeda El Husseini Dalloul, who from the 1970s until Ramzi’s death in 2021 amassed one of the most significant collections of modern and contemporary art. Their collecting inspired generations of collectors from the region, including their son Basel, who established the Dalloul Art Foundation, to manage the collection in 2017. The collection now numbers over 4,000 works, with major pieces by Dia Al-Azzawi, Mohamed Melehi, Huguette Caland, Mona Hatoum, and Baya Mahieddine, who is featured in the “Witch’s Cradle” section of the 2022 Venice Biennale.  

In an interview remembering Ramzi, fellow Top 200 Collector Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi told ARTnews, “My collecting practice developed in parallel with his, so it wasn’t directly influence by him, but it was definitely encouraged by him. If somebody is buying the same kind of work as you, you feel there’s a value attached to it. Dr. Ramzi was very pinpointed—he would identify a work, go for it, and buy it, almost no matter what.”

For his part, Basel has been fastidiously adding to the collection, acquiring nearly 40 works in 2022 alone. Among those purchases are works by Melehi, Ayman Baalbaki, Nadia Safieddine, Hady Sy, Missak Terzian, Katya Traboulsi, Hamed Eweis, Mahmoud Saïd, Serwan Baran, Abdulrahman Katanani, Maha El Mullah, Lalla Assaydi, Shafic Abboud, and Jewad Salim. The collection was missing a masterpiece from the latter artist, so Basel jumped at the opportunity to purchase one at auction for “a cool million dollars” in 2022, he told ARTnews by email.