The Louvre Abu Dhabi, first museum of its kind
The Louvre Abu Dhabi, the first museum to bear the Louvre name outside France, presents around 600 pieces in a modern, light-filled structure in harmony with its desertisland setting.
Flagged as “the first universal museum in the Arab world,” it sits on the low-lying Saadiyat Island, a developing tourism and culture hub 500 meters off the coast of the United Arab Emirates’ capital city.
It is the first museum to open on the island, also the site of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, which is still under construction.
French architect Jean Nouvel was inspired by the island’s position “between sand and sea, shade and light,” the Louvre website says.
“I also wanted to play on this idea of openness, that of a desert open to the sea,” the winner of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize told AFP in September.
The site comprises 55 white buildings reminiscent of traditional Arab medinas.
Two-thirds of the museum is covered by a dome, 180 meters in diameter, which provides welcome shade from the scorching Gulf sun.
Pierced with 7,850 starlike openings formed by the layering of the building’s structure, like interwoven palm leaves, the dome is intended to resemble silver lace.
“For me, great Arab architecture [is] geometry with lights,” Nouvel said.
The vast project claims to be “the first museum of its kind in the Arab world: A universal museum that focuses on shared human stories across civilizations and cultures.”
The museum’s price tag was initially estimated at $654 million, to be put up by Abu Dhabi under a deal signed with France in 2007.
For the next 10 years, The Louvre in France will lend works to its Abu Dhabi partner for a maximum of two years on a voluntary basis.
For its permanent collection, the museum has acquired hundreds of pieces, dating from the earliest Mesopotamian civilizations to the present day.
Thirteen top French museums, including the Musee d’Orsay and the Palace of Versailles, will also loan the Louvre Abu Dhabi 300 works of art over the first year.