The Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts is the main contemporary art museum in Amman and one of the most important in the Arab world, with a collection of over 3,000 works by Jordanian and international artists from the Arab and Islamic world. Housed in two connected buildings in Jabal al-Luweibdeh, the gallery runs changing exhibitions alongside its permanent collection, which spans painting, sculpture, photography and video from the 20th century to the present.
The collection is strongest in Arab modernism — work from the 1960s to 1980s by Egyptian, Palestinian, Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian artists who developed distinctive regional responses to international movements. The programming tends toward the serious; this is not a tourist attraction but a working cultural institution. The cafe and terrace are good for a break in the Luweibdeh neighbourhood.