Features

Abu Dhabi: Arabian masterpiece

30 Mar 2015 by Tom Otley
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is due to open at the end of the year. Tom Otley finds out what’s in store for visitors A bu Dhabi wants to attract cultured travellers, and it is pulling out all the stops to ensure there are world-class venues and exhibits for them to visit. The Norman Foster-designed Zayed National Museum will open in 2016, and a Guggenheim, designed by Frank Gehry and 12 times the size of Frank Lloyd Wright’s original in New York, will follow in 2018. Before either of those, however, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is scheduled to open at the end of this year. Designed by Jean Nouvel, the building will certainly be the match of any flagship museum worldwide. The white dome is 180 metres in diameter, and has geometric openings inspired by the interlaced palm leaves used as roofing in traditional houses, the gaps controlling the light and temperature inside. The interior will be illuminated by scattered beams of light mimicking the environment created by traditional mashrabiya latticework. Underneath the dome, Nouvel is recreating an Arabic cityscape, with a promenade passing through clusters of low-rise buildings with diverse façades, “creating a shifting, varied, poetic experience for visitors and a contrast to the strict geometry and high ceilings of the galleries inside,” the museum says. The Louvre is taking more than just the name of its Parisian counterpart. An extensive training programme for staff has been ongoing, and many of the items on display will be on loan from French cultural institutions such as the Musée d’Orsay and Musée de Quai Branly, as well as the Louvre. Visitors will walk through four major periods chronologically: archaeology and the birth of civilisation; Medieval days and the birth of Islam; the Classical period from Humanism to Enlightenment; and modern and contemporary art. As they do, they will take in everything from ancient Roman, Egyptian and Chinese sculptures to works by da Vinci, Titian, Monet, Rodin, Van Gogh and Warhol. louvreabudhabi.ae
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