Alastair Sooke
Abu Dhabi Louvre: What’s the point?
‘See humanity in a new light.” This is the marketing mantra of Louvre Abu Dhabi, a spectacular new museum that seems to float upon the Persian Gulf, and which opened in the capital of the United Arab Emirates last month. As slogans go, it’s ambitious to the point of hubris. A recalibration of our understanding of mankind? That’s some promise.
But bold, blithe self-confidence is in this institution’s DNA. It needs to be, because, since 2007, when the agreement, reportedly worth more than £663million, was signed between the governments of the UAE and France, Louvre Abu Dhabi has been beset by critics.
At first, there was snobbish dismay that an institution as venerable as the Musée du Louvre had agreed to something so vulgar as leasing out its name, for 30 years. Then, there was outrage about the appalling conditions endured by the South Asian workers employed to construct it.
For now, though, let’s put this controversial history to one side, and salute a newborn museum, revelling in its shiny infancy. Because, above all, there is one reason to visit Louvre Abu Dhabi – and that is the building itself, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel.
From afar, it doesn’t look like much: a low, grey smudge at the western end of Saadiyat Island, or “Island of Happiness”, which is being developed as a “cultural district” by the Emirate’s authorities. Up close, though, Nouvel’s structure is magnificent, a quietly opulent marvel that is the antithesis of bling. As you stand within the embrace of its sensational dome, constructed from a complex lattice of 7,850 steel stars, all is stillness and serenity. Sunlight twinkles through the parasol-like structure. Birdsong provides a pleasant soundtrack. Tranquil pools lead the eye to the turquoise sea beyond.
Already, it is conventional to compare this apparently weightless carapace to a flying saucer, because it seems to hover above the museum. This image, though, is misleading, since the architecture is less sci-fi, more old-world.
Palm-tree leaves provided Nouvel with inspiration, and his dome has the thick, interwoven quality of a thatched roof. Beneath it, 55 blocky, whitewashed buildings and pavilions cluster together, higgledy-piggledy, in an artful muddle, like a medina. The whole low-slung ensemble offers a welcome foil to the green-windowed postmodern high-rises that otherwise dominate the city’s skyline. Inside, a meandering suite of galleries host the permanent collection.
Already, this consists of more than 620 objects – a jaw-dropping haul, given that the first piece, an abstract painting by Mondrian once owned by Yves Saint Laurent, was acquired as recently as 2009. Moreover, the collection is still rapidly expanding, and at great expense: last month, the Emirate’s department of culture and tourism spent a record-breaking $450million (£342million) to secure Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which will go on display next year. Until then, visitors must “make do” with Leonardo’s Belle Ferronnière, one of hundreds of loans from 13 French partner museums (including the Louvre) which, in accordance with the 2007 deal, will travel to Abu Dhabi over the next decade.
Both the permanent displays and the inaugural temporary exhibition, From One Louvre to Another – which opens today and which outlines the history of the Paris Louvre’s formation in around 150 artworks, many of which I doubt will set pulses racing – are unerringly on-message.
Repeatedly, we are told that Louvre Abu Dhabi is a “universal museum” for the 21st century – just as its progenitor in Paris, which was inaugurated in 1793 (almost 180 years before the founding of the federation of the UAE), enshrined Enlightenment values by making great art accessible to all. What this means in practice is that the permanent exhibitions have been organised into 12 “chapters” with titles such as “Civilisations and Empires” and “Universal Religions”. Sundry artefacts from every corner of the world are shown side by side to illustrate common values and ideas that supposedly transcend barriers of nationality and faith.
At first, this ironclad curatorial conceit is innovative and winning. The introductory “vestibule” is a coup, with cases displaying triads of eye-catching objects that differ wildly but nevertheless enjoy thematic and formal correspondences. The first vitrine, devoted to motherhood, displays a 14th-century ivory statuette of the Virgin and Child alongside
‘It ignores centuries of conflict in favour of a hippy-dippy, quasipantheistic vision’
an ancient Egyptian bronze of the goddess Isis nursing her son Horus and a 19th-century wooden “phemba” maternity figure by a Yombe artist.
Yet this sunny, idealistic approach – “Look! We, humanity, are one big happy family, bound together by the same desires and concerns!” – does not let up. Gradually it dawns that the overarching idea is a sort of twofold geopolitical mission: ostensibly to trumpet globalisation and feelings of fraternity with our fellow man, and, semi-covertly, to provide a soft-power demonstration of Abu Dhabi’s presence on the international stage.
Evidence of the latter is provided by one of the highlights of the new temporary exhibition: an elaborate 18th-century timepiece, known as the Creation of the World clock, on loan from France. Before it travelled to the Arabian Peninsula, restorers swivelled its silver-plated bronze globe so that the gilt-bronze rays of the clock’s prominent sun would strike Abu Dhabi. Money can buy a lot – even a spin of the Earth’s axis.
Of course, it can be instructive to compare works from distant cultures: witness the telling juxtaposition of a life-size marble statue of a Roman “orator” with a schist bodhisattva from ancient Gandhara, in modern-day Pakistan. Both, surprisingly, are infused with the spirit of Greek art.
Too often, though, the connections seem strained. The “chapter” devoted to the “universal religions” of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam is a tour de force of wishful thinking, ignoring centuries of conflict in favour of a hippy-dippy, quasi-pantheistic vision, in which a 16th-century German wooden figure of Christ, say, is presented as equivalent to a 13th-century Malian ancestor figure, since both are “incarnations of the sacred”.
How universal is this “universal museum”, anyway? Aside from ancient sculptures, and a voluptuous modern artwork by Yves Klein, I encountered few female nudes
– no surprise, perhaps, given the conservative nature of Emirati society. At Louvre Abu Dhabi, humanity is indeed seen in a new light – devoid of sex.
Moreover, not many works depict violence, since, presumably, they would contravene the museum’s optimistic ideals. It is situated on “Happiness Island”, after all.
Yet thanks to editorialising omissions like these, the prevailing approach feels shallow. Suggesting superficial connections between unrelated masterpieces belongs to the coffee-table-book school of exhibition-making. Indeed, Louvre Abu Dhabi offers exactly the sort of quick, sleek, Instagrammable experience that will appeal to passengers stopping for a night or two between long-haul flights.
Yes, many of the artworks enchant and beguile. But an array of sumptuous morsels does not make a meal. By insistently privileging the “universal” over the specific, Louvre Abu Dhabi tries to say everything
– but, simultaneously, risks saying nothing.
From One Louvre to Another opens at Louvre Abu Dhabi today; louvreabudhabi.ae