Posts
Bold installations sell to ideas-driven regional collectors
Published online: 24 March 2015
Work on Louvre Abu Dhabi goes into overdrive
Official opening date probably in 2016 as thousands of workers drafted
in to complete the vast building
Published online: 04 March 2015
Sharjah Biennial’s 12th edition casts a utopian gaze across the city
Off-the-beaten-track spaces house new site-specific works
Published online: 04 March 2015
Artists’ subtle critique of power opens at New York University’s Abu
Dhabi outpost
The collective Slavs and Tatars ends a three-month residency at Saadiyat
Island with an exhibition on princely grooming
Published online: 28 February 2015
Technology’s impact on the arts to be debated in the Gulf
Global Art Forum announces line-up for its ninth edition next month
Published online: 23 February 2015
UAE announces group show with 14 artists for its Venice pavilion
Some will also be participating in the Sharjah Biennial
Published online: 27 January 2015
Abu Dhabi’s wish-list from the British Museum grows
Loans could number several hundred and go to the Gulf for extended stays
Published online: 20 January 2015
Sneak a peek at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s collection
Exhibition opening this week sheds light on the museum's acquisitions
and curatorial framework
Published online: 05 November 2014
French museums offer top loans to Louvre Abu Dhabi
Eclectic selection of 300 works from 13 institutions was chosen to tell
a “universal narrative”
Published online: 14 October 2014
Portrait by Leonardo da Vinci among inaugural loans to Louvre Abu Dhabi
First 300 works to travel from France to the Gulf's "universal" museum
announced
Published online: 12 October 2014
Sneak a peek at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s collection
Exhibition opening this week sheds light on the museum's
acquisitions and curatorial framework
Angela Bulloch, 6 Chains: Permutation B (52:4-White), 2002. Photo: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
How the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, scheduled to open on Saadiyat Island in 2017, will fill
its overall 860,000 sq. ft space has been a subject of speculation in recent years. An
exhibition opening this month gives a glimpse not only of some of
the works acquired for the collection, but also the mega-museum’s proposed curatorial
framework.
“Seeing Through Light” features 18 works from the 1960s to today by Middle Eastern
and international artists such as Angela Bulloch, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian,
Bharti Kher, Yayoi Kusama and Rachid Koraïchi. “The works on show
focus on a single theme, telling the history and story of light and its significance
in modern aesthetics and in relation to everyday-life,” says Maisa Al
Qassimi, the programmes manager at Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
The show has five sections —“Activated”, “Celestial”, “Perceptual”, “Reflected”
and “Transcendent”—and includes 16 acquisitions and two works lent by its partner
institution, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. These are
Dan Flavin’s Untitled (to Jan and Ron Greenberg), 1972-73, and Larry Bell’s 20”
Untitled 1969 (Tom Messer Cube), 1969.
Al Qassimi says that the show is a forerunner for the thematic presentation of
the collection in the future museum. “We will display the works according to
their aesthetic value, in reference to the narrative of the museum where each
gallery will explore a distinct artistic concept,” she says. The theme of light
may be explored further as a curatorial conceit in the new museum, which will
have a focus on a “transnational narrative” across cultures and continents.
“Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will invite artists to produce site-specific commissions
for dedicated galleries, select exterior locations, and the iconic scaled cones
that encircle the museum,” Al Qassimi says. The sheer size of the new Frank
Gehry-designed building no doubt lends itself to large-scale commissions
(this strategy may prove useful for filling any gaps in the collection, as well as the
vast physical space). Al Qassimi declined to give details about the annual
acquisition budget.
Seeing Through Light: Selections from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Collection, Manarat
Al Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, 5 November-19 January 2015
Abu Dhabi’s wish-list from the British Museum grows
Loans could number several hundred and go to the Gulf for extended stays
By Martin Bailey. Museums, Issue 264, January 2015
Published online: 20 January 2015
Figure of a camel, Tang dynasty, 618-906, China, copyright British Museum
The British Museum (BM) is about to start negotiating with Abu Dhabi over which objects
will be lent to the Zayed National Museum, which is due to open in 2016. Several hundred
objects are likely to be chosen to go on loan to the Gulf for a
number of years.
The Abu Dhabi museum’s website illustrates some of the objects it hopes to display,
although all loans will require the formal approval of the British Museum’s trustees.
These include a Nimrud carved stone panel of a woman leading camels
(728BC), a relief depicting Assyrian soldiers (640BC), an Arab astrolabe (seventh to
eighth centuries), a Tang earthenware camel (610-906), an Iranian
portrait of a falconer (1570) and an Ottoman sundial (1582-83). The trustees have authorised
the start of negotiations but discussions are at an early stage.
In addition to the long-term loans, very important pieces will be lent on a short-term basis.
The Zayed National Museum is also building its own collection, with advice from BM curators.
It has been quietly buying during the past few years, focussing on objects that relate to
the history and trading links of the area that is now the
United Arab Emirates (UAE). The museum will also have an ambitious programme of
temporary exhibitions, some of which will be organised by the BM.
Named after Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi from 1966 (and the
president of the UAE from 1971) until his death in 2004, the national museum on
Saadiyat Island has been designed by the architectural firm Foster + Partners. It
will be linked to the nearby Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and Louvre Abu Dhabi by a service
road-tunnel. The architects’ design features a series of towers, reminiscent
of falcon wings; the highest will be 125m tall. The galleries will cover 5,800 sq. m,
and the seven permanent galleries will each have a theme: Sheikh
Zayed, falconry, geography, heritage, history, science and Islam. There will also
be an important library, which will focus on the UAE.
The British Museum signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development &
Investment Company (TDIC) in 2009 to provide technical advice on setting up the
museum, advice on acquisitions, training and loans, in exchange for a generous fee.
Neither side is willing to disclose the terms, saying that they are “commercially
confidential”. In 2013/14, the BM earned £18.5m as trading income,
with a significant (but undisclosed) part coming from the Abu Dhabi contract.
The BM currently has 27 staff working on the Zayed project in London and Abu Dhabi,
led by Stephanie Hall, a deputy director of the London museum. The Natural History
Museum in London is also providing advice.
The British Museum is anxious to ensure that the construction workers building the
Zayed National Museum are being reasonably treated, and to avoid the criticism faced
by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation over the terms and conditions
experienced by migrant construction workers in Abu Dhabi. Last April, a trustee of
the BM, the Egyptian-born writer Ahdaf Soueif, visited Abu Dhabi to
examine the situation. In November, the London museum’s chairman, Richard Lambert,
visited the Saadiyat Accommodation Village, which houses workers. He
was satisfied, although it will not be possible to verify that conditions on
the building site are acceptable until construction has begun.
When the 2009 agreement was signed, the museum was due to open in 2012-13. The
schedule has slipped and it is now planned to open in 2016, but time is still
tight, given that construction has not yet begun. The museum does not yet have a
director, and in the interim, the project is being overseen by Lebanese-born
Rita Aoun-Abdo, the executive director of the Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority.
Abu Dhabi’s Tourism Development & Investment Company is unwilling to reveal the
cost of the Zayed National Museum, but a financial prospectus reveals that the
three museums on Saadiyat Island will cost a total of AED17.1bn ($4.7bn)—probably
the largest single investment in a museum complex anywhere in the world. The
capital cost of the three museums is estimated at $2.6bn, of which $477m had been
spent by December 2010—$108m on the Zayed National Museum (in the foreground),
$175m on the Louvre Abu Dhabi and $194m on the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
There is also $2.1bn for cultural programming—acquisitions, organising shows and
contractual fees payable to the museums’ Western partners.
French museums offer top loans to Louvre Abu Dhabi
Eclectic selection of 300 works from 13 institutions was chosen to tell a “universal narrative”
By Javier Pes. From Frieze daily edition
Published online: 14 October 2014
David’s portrait of Napoleon is heading to Abu Dhabi. napoleon: © RMN (Château de Versailles) F. Raux
France’s leading museums will lend some of their most famous works to the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which is due to open at the end of next year. Around 300 works will be lent, ranging from Leonardo’s Portrait of an Unknown Woman (also known as La Belle Ferronnière), around 1495, from the Louvre in Paris, to Warhol’s Big Electric Chair, 1967-68, from the Centre Pompidou. The eclectic selection also includes an ancient stone mask from Mexico that once belonged to André Breton, on loan from the Musée du Quai Branly, as well as works by Monet, Matisse and Richter.
The first batch of works being lent by 13 French institutions to the Jean Nouvel-designed museum has been selected by TCA Abu Dhabi, Agence France-Muséums and the individual museums.
Jean-François Charnier, the curatorial director of Agence France-Muséums, tells The Art Newspaper that the works have been chosen to tell a “universal narrative”. Works from France and those in the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s collection will be displayed to create a dialogue between different civilisations and artistic traditions “from pre-history to the 21st century”, he says. Hissa Al Dhaheri, the programmes manager of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, says that only in Abu Dhabi will such different works be shown in the same space.
Political power in the modern age will be represented by Jacques-Louis David’s equestrian portrait Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 1803, from Versailles, which will hang near a portrait of George Washington from the Gulf museum’s collection. Works will be on loan for between three months and two years.
Fleur Pellerin, France’s new minister of culture and communication, said in a statement that the selection of “these masterpieces” represents “a major step in this great project”.
Under the terms of the 30-year agreement made between the United Arab Emirates and France in 2007, the number of loans will decrease as the Gulf museum’s collection grows. It has acquired around 500 works so far, ranging from a 3,000-year-old bracelet made in Iran to nine paintings by Cy Twombly.
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