Modern Art in the Arab World is a collection of approximately 125 primary documents dealing with the debates around modernism in the Arab world dating between 1882 to 1987. This essay responds to the book from two perspectives: first, as an academic researching modernism in Morocco, and second, as a Qatar-based professor that teaches undergraduate courses about modern and contemporary Arab art. The book highlights a broadly defined and heterogeneous Arab world that extends from Morocco to the Gulf, and the selected texts create new conversations between these varied movements. It is evidence of the changing nature of this field of study. As a tool for teaching, the book offers signposts about what the editors consider to be the most significant debates and events in a given place while also creating the possibility for reading these movements transnationally.