A stunning new branch of Paris' Louvre Museum.
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:Prefiguration exhibitionsEdit
"The Louvre Abu Dhabi first started sharing its collection with the public through an exhibition at the Gallery One of the Emirates Palace, entitled "Talking Art: Louvre Abu Dhabi." It was inaugurated by Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Nicolas Sarkozy on 26 May 2009, the same day as the construction work officially started on Saadiyat Island. The exhibition presented the first 19 acquisitions for the institution, including a Mamluk Quran from the 14th century, a 5th-century Fibula from Domagnano, a Virgin and Child by Bellini, and Mondrian’s Composition with blue, red, yellow and black from 1922.
A second exhibition, "Birth of a Museum", opened at the exhibition space Manarat Al Saadiyat in May 2013, ending in August that year. The first large-scale preview of the collection, it featured 130 works acquired by the government of Abu Dhabi for the permanent collection. They included a never-before-seen work by Picasso, a Bronze Age terracotta statue from Cyprus, along with artifacts from Greece, Turkey, Japan and Syria.
In May 2014, the Birth of a Museum exhibition, featuring works shown in Abu Dhabi and a number of new acquisitions, opened at the Louvre in Paris. A number of new works were presented, including Chirisei Kyubiki by the Japanese artist Kazuo Shiraga and painted in 1960.
Inauguration and aftermathEdit
The museum was eventually inaugurated on 8 November 2017 by French President Emmanuel Macron, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince (and de facto ruler) Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and UAE Prime Minister and Emir of Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Other personalities present at the inauguration included Mohammed VI of Morocco and President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani. The museum was opened to the public three days later. It welcomed more than one million visitors in its first full year of operations, of which 30-40 percent were UAE residents and 60-70 percent from abroad (mainly France, Germany, China, the UK, the US, India and the GCC countries); this made it the 77th most visited museum worldwide in 2018.
In November 2019, the waterfront boulevard on which the museum is located on the eastern end of Saadiyat Island was named after former French President Jacques Chirac, in recognition of his role in the project and more generally in the development of links between France and the UAE.
In February 2020, a Fouquet's restaurant opened as the main catering amenity inside the museum, with a menu created in partnership with celebrity chef Pierre Gagnaire."