Overview:
The Louvre Abu Dhabi is a museum of arts, culture, and history located in the capital of the United Arab Emirates and was built by French architect Jean Nouvel. The museum is located in Saadiyat Island Cultural District. Approximately 24,000 square feet (260,000 sq ft) in size, with 8,000 square feet (86,000 sq ft) of exhibits, making it the largest art museum on the Arabian Peninsula.
Art works from around the world are on display in the museum, with a strong focus on closing the gap between Eastern and Western art.
The United Arab Emirates is a small and small country, yet it has become one of the most important business and tourism destinations in the Middle East and Asia.
About the size of Austria, the country is made up of seven independent emirates joining the coalition; The Emirate of Abu Dhabi is the largest and most populous in the UAE.
Abu Dhabi’s vast wealth comes from the country’s vast oil reserves; however, the emirate has wisely embarked on a policy aimed at developing alternative, illegal resources, diversifying its economy, and becoming a geographical and global destination in areas such as tourism, health, education and culture.
Development of Saadiyat Cultural Region:
Abu Dhabi’s leading cultural development project is the Saadiyat Cultural District, located on an island 27 square kilometers 500 meters from the emirate coast. Designed by Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development & Investment Company (TDIC), upon completion, the Cultural District will include four museums and a Performing Art Center.
Museums are Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, focusing on contemporary and contemporary art, designed by Frank Gehry; The Zayed National Museum, dedicated to UAE history, was designed by Norman Foster; Tadao Ando’s Maritime Museum; and Jean Nouvel’s Louvre Abu Dhabi; The Performing Arts Center designed by Zaha Hadid is complementing the provision of major cultural sites in the region.
Construction of the Louvre Abu Dhabi:
After a 30-year agreement between France and the United Arab Emirates, the Louvre Museum Abu Dhabi showcases the art borrowed from both state-owned museums – including the Louvre, Center Pompidou, Musée d’Orsay, Musée de l ‘Orangerie, Musée du Quai Branly Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles, and Musée Rodin, among others – and the Louvre Abu Dhabi collection itself.
The idea for the Louvre Abu Dhabi was to establish a “general” art museum with exhibitions covering various cultural and historical sites. The museum officially opened on November 11, 2017.
The design concept developed in 2007 by Jean Nouvel of the Louvre Abu Dhabi was strongly promoted, figuratively and legally, by elements of the Arabian architectural culture. At the same time, the French architect had to contend with special climatic conditions and locations because, as Jean Nouvel puts it, “all weather conditions are the same. Warm in the cold. Cool in tropical areas. People do not respond well to heat waves. And they don’t do works of art. Such basic views have had an impact on the Louvre Abu Dhabi. It aspires to create a welcoming world that combines light and peace, appearance and calm. ”
Located on an artificial island, the 63,000-square-foot (680,000-square-foot) museum is made up of a number of low-rise, simple parallelepipeds, arranged in randomly visible sequences to commemorate the construction of the medina town.
These buildings alternate with paved areas, with water pools – a reference to the traditional role of water in Islamic architecture and a clever solution aimed at providing natural cooling and ventilation for people and works of art.
The building materials found in these buildings are mainly earth and mineral: stone, stucco, and cement.
The museum covers 6,700 square meters (72,000 square meters) of permanent exhibition space and 2,300 square meters (25,000 square meters) of temporary exhibition spaces. Two-thirds of this “art village” is covered by a large circular dome, 180/590 meters across, which provides shelter, dimming, and natural lighting for the complex.
Collections:
Louvre Abu Dhabi began sharing its collection with the public with an exhibition entitled “Talking Art: Louvre Abu Dhabi,” which opened in May 2009. The exhibition presented the first 19 discoveries of the institute, including the 14th-century Mamluk Quran. , 5th-century Domagnano Fibula, Virgin and Child by Bellini, and Mondrian Composer in blue, red, yellow and black from 1922.
The second exhibition, “Birth of the Museum”, opened at the Manarat Al Saadiyat exhibition center in May 2013, and ended in August of that year. A preview of the large collection, highlighted 130 jobs acquired by the Abu Dhabi government through permanent collection. They include an unprecedented work by Picasso, a sculpture made of Bronze Age terracotta from Cyprus, and artifacts from Greece, Turkey, Japan, and Syria.
In May 2014, an exhibition of the Birth of a Museum, featuring works on display in Abu Dhabi and a new discovery opened at the Louvre in Paris. Several works were introduced, including Chirisei Kyubiki by Japanese artist Kazuo Shiraga and painted in 1960.