Louvre Abu Dhabi
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is an art museum in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates . The name is derived from the Musée du Louvre in Paris , with which there is a close cooperation. The French architect Jean Nouvel designed a new building for the museum on Saadiyat Island . French President Emmanuel Macron attended the inauguration on November 8, 2017 by Chalifa bin Zayid Al Nahyan . The official opening took place on November 11, 2017.
history
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As part of the planning for the creation of a cultural area on the island, the governments of the United Arab Emirates and France agreed on March 6, 2007, a close cooperation initially planned for 30 years. Among other things, the decision was made to build an art museum in Abu Dhabi. The name Louvre Abu Dhabi was chosen and the architect Jean Nouvel was commissioned with the planning. The French side not only accompanied the planning and construction of the building, but was also responsible for the scientific conception of the museum. In addition, the museum is to receive significant loans from French museums in the first ten years after opening and organize four temporary exhibitions in each of the first 15 years. In addition, the French side is helping the new museum to build up its own art collection. In return, the United Arab Emirates will pay France 965 million euros, which are earmarked for the French museums.
During the construction work on the museum building, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayid Al Nahyan and French President Nicolas Sarkozy opened a first museum exhibition in 2009 , which was on view in the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi. This exhibition showed the first 19 exhibits acquired for the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the first loans from French museums. In 2013, an exhibition was shown in the Louvre in Paris with exhibits purchased for the Louvre Abu Dhabi collection. The director of the museum is Manuel Rabaté, who previously worked at the Louvre in Paris, his deputy is Hissa Al Dhaheri, who comes from Abu Dhabi.
building
A cultural quarter is being built on Saadiyat with museums that are still in the planning and construction phase. So is designed by Norman Foster , the Zayed National Museum of Arab culture and built by Frank Gehry come the plans for the museum Guggenheim Abu Dhabi , will be shown in the contemporary art. In addition, a marine museum is being built according to plans by Tadao Ando and the design for a theater building comes from Zaha Hadid's office .
The property of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is located directly on the coast of the Persian Gulf . Jean Nouvel was commissioned by the client to design a museum that would combine modern architecture with the tradition of Arab buildings. He then developed a building complex that consists of 55 rectangular buildings arranged next to and one above the other. These buildings with their flat roofs and the paths in between are intended to be reminiscent of an Arab old town; they are surrounded by several water basins. As a striking eye-catcher, Nouvel has stretched a flat dome 180 meters in diameter over this arrangement: This multi-layer, net-like dome construction consists of 8,000 metal stars through which rays of light fall on the buildings and water surfaces below. The museum has a total area of 24,000 square meters, of which 6,000 are intended for permanent exhibitions and 2,000 for special exhibitions.
collection
The Louvre Abu Dhabi collection is designed for the period from antiquity to the 21st century. In the case of the Paris model, the time span extends to around 1850, for the period after that there are various other state museums such as the Musée d'Orsay or the Musée National d'Art Moderne in the Center Georges-Pompidou . The works of art acquired since 2009 include, for example, the sculpture of a princess from Bactria from the 3rd millennium BC. BC or an ancient Egyptian bronze statuette of Osiris from the Third Intermediate Period . There is also a wooden figure of the Soninke from Mali , a statue of the Bodhisattva from the Gandhara region in Pakistan, a Buddha head from the Chinese dynasty of the Northern Qi , a South Indian bronze figure of a dancing Shiva , a Persian paper painting of Bahram V in the green pavilion and a Persian one Gold bracelet with lion figures. There is also a black-figure terracotta vase from Greece from around 520 BC. BC depicting the battle between Herakles and the Nemean lion , an eagle brooch from Domagnano from the 2nd half of the 5th century, a Koran manuscript by the Mamluks from the 2nd half of the 13th century or a wood carving of Christ from around 1515–1520 shows his wounds from the German-speaking area.
In the field of European painting, there is a Virgin and Child by Giovanni Bellini , a Good Samaritan by Jacob Jordaens , a picture with the motif of Jacob's Ladder by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and a painting by Esther's Impotence by Jean François de Troy . There is also the portrait of William Welby and his wife Penelope playing chess by Francis Cotes , a bathing nymph by Louis Jean François Lagrenée and the historical painting Don Pedro of Toledo kisses the sword of Henry IV by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres . Works such as Le Bohémien and Nature morte au cabas et à l'ail by Édouard Manet , La Partie de bésigue by Gustave Caillebotte , Les Enfants luttant by Paul Gauguin and the portrayal of the Young Emir while studying by the Turkish painter Osman Hamdi date from the 19th century Bey . Examples of 20th century painting are works such as the 1928 gouache Portrait de femme by Pablo Picasso , the painting La Lectrice soumise by René Magritte , the composition in blue, red, yellow and black by Piet Mondrian and the picture Anthropométrie by Yves Klein .
criticism
The Louvre Abu Dhabi project was particularly criticized in France. While the former minister of culture Jack Lang defended the cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, the former museum director Françoise Cachin criticized the project in an article in the newspaper Le Monde , which she believes violates the ethics of museum work. A corresponding petition against the collaboration was supported by numerous art historians, curators and other personalities. The points of criticism included feared competition in the purchase of collection items and the associated conflicts of interest of the employees of the French museums, who on the one hand are supposed to advise the Louvre Abu Dhabi and on the other hand are obliged to their employer in France. Another point of criticism concerns the legal status of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the collection of which is privately owned by the family of the Emir of Abu Dhabi. The French museum curators, on the other hand, are committed to the national heritage of France and cannot work for the private property of a foreign ruler.
In January 2018 Ulrich Schmid drew attention to the fact that the Qatar peninsula was missing on a map in the children's department, on which historical trade routes are listed , and wrote: "Maps reveal a lot about their makers".
literature
- Laurence des Cars: Louvre Abou Dabi. Naissance d'un musée , catalog for the exhibition at the Louvre Paris, Musée du Louvre and Skira, Paris 2013, ISBN 978-2-08123-237-2 .
Web links
- Louvre Abu Dhabi website (English, French, Arabic)
- Louvre Abu Dhabi opens doors to visitors . In Focus Online , November 11, 2017
- Helge Sobik: Louvre in Abu Dhabi - How Picasso got into the desert . In: Der Spiegel , October 17, 2017
- Jürgen König: Louvre Abu Dhabi - New museum of superlatives . In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur , November 8, 2017
Individual evidence
- ↑ Torsten Landsberg: Macron pays tribute to the Louvre in Abu Dhabi. In: dw.com. November 8, 2017, accessed November 4, 2019 .
- ↑ Louvre Abu Dhabi opens doors to visitors. focus.de, November 11, 2017, accessed on November 11, 2017 .
- ^ Bernhard Schulz: Weltmuseum am Wüstenrand , Der Tagesspiegel, November 7, 2017.
- ^ Les musées ne sont pas à vendre, par Françoise Cachin, Jean Clair et Roland Recht. Article in Le Monde magazine on December 12, 2006.
- ↑ Ulrich Schmid: Qatar's strange disappearance. Column. In: nzz.ch . January 25, 2018, accessed August 21, 2020.
Coordinates: 24 ° 32 ′ 1 ″ N , 54 ° 23 ′ 54.2 ″ E