Founded in 1993 by husband and wife Khalid and Suha Shoman, Darat al Funun represents a pioneering initiative for the visual arts in Jordan’s private sector. Neither a museum nor a gallery, Darat al Funun was founded as a home for the arts, dedicated to research, creativity, and cultural exchange. Housed in five historic buildings in the heart of the capital, Amman, Darat al Funun hosts artists’ residencies, workshops, exhibition galleries, lecture halls, a library, café, dissertation fellowship program, and extensive programming. Equally dedicated to research and practice, and artists and their audiences, Darat al Funun serves as a meeting point for artists from the region and abroad, while providing an infrastructure for a complete trajectory of artistic creation. Darat al Funun is also home to the Khalid Shoman Collection. Established in the early 1980s, the collection represents one of the earliest of its kind dedicated exclusively to contemporary art of the Arab world and its diasporas.