A new museum-esque gallery was launched in Dubai last week, housing an impressive array of ancient artifacts, prehistoric fossils, dinosaur skulls, skeletal remains from eons past, and even exquisitely crafted ornaments made of mammoth tusks. And there’s a catch – you can touch absolutely everything.
The brainchild of global powerlifting champions Andrei Zaikin and Kirill Sarychev, the Artefactum Gallery is the first of its kind in the region.
Arabian Business got an exclusive look into the gallery before its launch and sat down with the two visionaries behind the project to learn more about the gallery and how the idea to launch it in Dubai came about.
“The main idea of this gallery is to make it like some kind of museum. Usually, when you go to a museum, you can only look. But here, you can touch everything, and the main thing is, you can also buy them,” said Sarychev, who is also the President of the World Raw Powerlifting Federation (WRPF) and a holder of over 26 world records, widely regarded as one of the strongest men in the world.
Living between Dubai and Moscow, he recognised significant potential in opening up such a gallery in the UAE, given the substantial number of affluent people in the region with big spending power.
“Rich people like to impress each other. When they go to a birthday party, they might want to buy some unusual gift, and what can be more unusual and exclusive than what we have here at Artefactum? Sure, you can buy them a watch, but they can probably buy their own watches. But everything here is a masterpiece, one of a kind. What would you buy someone who already has everything?” he added.
Zaikin and Sarychev, who rose to fame for their work in the sports industry and on social media, are also known for a shocking YouTube video in which they uncovered the remains of an over 10,000-year-old mammoth, cooked it into a soup and ate it.
Zaikin, who is also a Russian businessman, internet personality and athlete, has always been a collector of rare items, a hobby that stemmed from his childhood. As a young boy, he collected post stamps and coins from the Soviet era, as well as rare World War II pieces including medals and posters.
After achieving great success as an entrepreneur, the avid collector also took up hunting and traveling the world through which he has managed to amass an impressive collection of rare artifacts.
“I like traveling. I’ve been to many countries in Africa and South Asia like Nepal and the South of China, among many other interesting places, and I learned a lot about their histories,” said Zaikin.
“All these experiences helped me to start vlogging on YouTube and Instagram three years ago. I started to tell people about the history of some strange things, special artifacts, old books, and post-WWII technical equipment.”
“I’m also a hunter. I hunted many animals in Russia and Africa. All this helped me learn more about the rare collectibles market.”
After meeting Paleontologist Shevyakov Denis, Zaikin decided to curate a collection of rare artifacts. And two years later, Artefactum was born.
“We visited many exhibitions about this and then I collected stuff. I started to think about where would be an interesting location for it and decided that the best place in the world to launch such a project was in Dubai,” he said.
“I asked my friend, Kirill, for advice about this and he told me it was a perfect idea. He knows all about blogging and social media, and he told me that we must make it into some media project so we approached Stefania Totolo, my friend who is an influencer, and this is how the project was brought to life.”
When you walk into the gallery, you are immediately greeted by a huge dinosaur-like skull – that of a Mesosaurus, an extinct reptile from the Early Permian geologic period found in southern Africa and South America.
Throughout the rest of the space, there are unique fossil sculptures hung up on the walls as well as skeletons of animals that once walked the Earth millions of years ago, animal skins and fur (including a polar bear), and even ancient jewelry recovered by archaeological excavations.
One particularly remarkable item was an intricately carved ornament fashioned from a mammoth’s tusk. But what made it even more intriguing was its unique status. It was the sole duplicate, with the identical ornament having been presented by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“All these pieces are legal, of course. We have all the documents to support that because we needed to provide this to customs for approval,” said Zaikin, emphasising that each item comes with a certificate of authenticity and that buyers can ask for an independent review should they deem it necessary.
“These pieces are strange and interesting, and they all have a history. If a client expresses interest in any of these pieces, I would give them the history of it. They’ll learn new information, probably something they didn’t know before about our planet, wildlife, prehistoric things, and maybe even some evolution theory.”
Pricing of ancient artifacts
The collection displayed has already garnered a lot of interest from local buyers, he explained.
The different items in the gallery, ranging from small geological artifacts to entire skeletons, are each priced based on their historical and archaeological significance.
“The price of a unique big piece of dinosaur museum quality comes to $500,000 (AED1.8 million) and at the same time, we have exhibits for exclusive gifts starting from $500 (AED1,836) up to $10,000 (AED36,729),” said Zaikin.
These gifts range from framed paintings made of butterfly wings to a small yet impressive piece of fossil, jewelry with dinosaur teeth or even a meteorite.
The latest major sale from the Artefactum Gallery’s collection, made within its first week of opening, was a Tyrannosaurus skeleton. The museum-quality artifact, standing at a height of 12 metres, was sold for $10 million (AED36.7 million).
Dinosaur skeletal remains can be priced depending on an array of factors. For instance, a Maximus T Rex skull fetched a price of $6 million (AED22 million), while a complete Deinonychus Antirrhopus skeleton commanded approximately $12 million (AED44 million) at a public auction. However, the most exorbitant sale in the history of dinosaur bones belongs to the Natural History Museum in Abu Dhabi, where they acquired the iconic Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton, affectionately known as Stan, for a staggering $31.8 million (AED116.8 million).
‘Dubai is the perfect hub’
The founders are already feeling optimistic about their gallery, setting their sights on potentially expanding to Abu Dhabi.
“Dubai is the perfect hub, positioned between the East and West, so why would we go to China or Australia when we can base ourselves in the UAE? It’s in a good geographic location and lots of people are interested in the country,” said Zaikin.
They plan to add two to three new pieces to the gallery’s collection every month. Some of the upcoming artifacts include a “huge, white mummified bear,” said Sarychev, the skeletal remains of an ancient cave bear, and a dinosaur skull embellished with the wings and exoskeleton of a rare bug.
“You can’t imagine how huge and rare Andrei’s collection in Moscow is,” said Sarychev. “Everything is a masterpiece, everything is unique.”
The booming UAE collectibles market reached $2.2 billion in 2022, according to recent estimates. As the country’s wealth continues to surge, wealthy residents have developed discerning tastes for rare books, artwork, and antiques from around the world.
Auction houses in Dubai occasionally facilitate big-ticket sales of hard-to-find pieces. While prehistoric relics may change hands privately at times, the overall scale and value specifically in ancient artifacts remains unclear within the broader multi-billion dollar industry, signifying a potential gap in the UAE’s rare collectibles market.
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