Louvre Abu Dhabi

The challenge of creating a singular museum

Through an intergovernmental agreement signed on March 6, 2007, France and the United Arab Emirates decided to create a universal museum, bearing the name Louvre Abu Dhabi, with an opening slated for 2014. This unprecedented venture lays the foundations for a new type of cultural collaboration between two sovereign nations, and fulfills mutual needs and aspirations.

The agreement will thus bestow the United Arab Emirates with an international museum that will place Abu Dhabi among the great cultural nations, and more particularly, the great museums of the world. More generally, the agreement will establish the United Arab Emirates as a central arena for dialogue between civilizations and cultures, particularly Occidental, Middle Eastern and Asian. The agreement will also forge a preferential cultural relationship with France, to benefit from its experience and its centuries-old heritage.

For France, the agreement underscores the excellence of its museum expertise and know-how through the design of a unique institution. It provides a cross-section of French public collections, showcasing them in a new light, for a new public. Given the high financial stakes involved, the agreement will in return allow for better development of projects by French museum partners of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.
The right to use the Louvre name for thirty years, governed by a specific agreement between the Musée du Louvre and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, is a key issue. The birth of a unique museum, bearing the Louvre name as a symbol of museum excellence and expertise, is a major event for the Louvre. It is closely involved in the design and implementation of the project with the Agence France-Muséums, a joint venture of the Louvre and the major French museums, specifically created for the Louvre Abu Dhabi project. The Louvre Abu Dhabi will not be a copy of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, but a new museum, which, by its very name, is called upon to convey and transmit the values of French museums. The ties between the Louvre Abu Dhabi and French museums, the foremost being the Louvre, are to be built and created. Through the duration and sustainability of this agreement, we can conceive, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, a new institution rooted by name in historical and museum tradition.

By making the museum a focus of its cultural development, the Emirate of Abu Dhabi underscores the museum institution’s capacity for invention and renewal.

The first universal museum in the Arab world, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is an innovative and ambitious project.

Transferring to an Arab country a cultural form born in Enlightenment Europe, its deep sense of identity is rooted in the notions of discovery, exchange and thus education. Its very name affirms the unprecedented alliance between the world’s biggest museum, a permanent place of beauty and knowledge, and modern Arabia, whose exceptional dynamism is at the heart of the contemporary world.  It is not a matter of reproducing the Louvre, or following its scientific itinerary to the letter, but rather extending in its name a generous invitation to a sensitive and enlightened view. The notions of sharing and universal knowledge that prevailed at the opening of the Muséum National in 1793 are thus incorporated into this project. The museum is first and foremost the reflection of a world in which, as Boissy d’Anglas writes, “the whole world is eager to leave its treasures, its rarities, its productions and all the accounts of its history.”

Through loans provided for in the intergovernmental agreement, the contributions from a number of French public collections, particularly those of the Agence France-Muséums shareholder institutions: the Louvre, of course, as well as the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée et domaine national de Versailles, the Musée Guimet, the Musée du Quai Branly, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Musée Rodin, will doubtless take these ideas to a new level. For the first time in their museum history, these ensembles will often find continuity and unity of presentation, going beyond habitual institutional boundaries. Multidisciplinary, and contemplating the concomitance and correspondence of artistic expressions from different civilizations, the scientific and cultural choices of the Louvre Abu Dhabi will encourage the exploration of new approaches and open new perspectives on French museum heritage.

The polyphonic collections reflect the multicultural reality of current and future development in Abu Dhabi, a characteristic that prolongs Arabia’s age-old role as a bridge between the West and East, the North and South. The days of the Incense Route and the history of the Persian Gulf, which served as a link between Europe and the Indian Ocean, opening up exchanges between Asia and Africa, gave rise to the concept of a crossroads of civilizations that will be highlighted in museum exhibition spaces.

The permanent and unique exchange between the East and West consequently established by the Louvre Abu Dhabi will help this new cultural institution secure its place on the international museum scene. The creation in Abu Dhabi of other museums—the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Sheikh Zayed Museum, designed with the expertise of the British Museum — but also universities — the birth of the Paris Sorbonne Université in Abu Dhabi, in connection with Paris IV, the opening of a New York University branch campus in particular—is sure to establish the Emirate as the new “go to” place for education and culture in this part of the world.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi, an expression of the new global dimension of museums

The focus of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is a universal vocation underlined in the intergovernmental agreement of March 6, 2007. The United Arab Emirates have thus taken a major step toward making the Louvre Abu Dhabi the first universal museum in the Arab world. This decision, as bold as it may be, must not come as a surprise from a young country, still under construction, which intends to show its desire and need to embrace skills and knowledge. Acknowledging the universal nature of the Louvre Abu Dhabi means fully embracing the constant and natural extension of the museum family. The intergovernmental agreement that presides over the creation of the institution provides the terms for an international collaboration of unprecedented scope.

Clearly removed from the concept of a short-lived event, the Louvre Abu Dhabi views the project at another level to lay the foundations of a sustainable institution bearing the Louvre name for thirty years. Its design is thus in keeping with the development of an international public, increasingly diverse and greater in number for the Louvre and French museums, regarded around the world as a gold standard of cultural excellence. It is also a symbol of renewal, since the creation of the Museum Central des Arts in 1793, the Louvre and French museums.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi will express the universalism of its time, that of a globalized and interdependent world. Its duty will also be to translate exactingly and instructively the spirit of openness and dialogue demonstrated by a young Arab nation. Abu Dhabi is a multicultural city between Asia and the West where North-South relations are condensed, and where cosmopolitanism is a fact of life. It is thus a natural invitation to take part in dialogue and share experiences.
The project excludes no one: all cultures and civilizations that make up the global inventory of humanity are invited to express themselves, and the public as a whole is invited to visit. Since dialogue implies mutual understanding, in-depth reflection on outreach will aim to meet the challenge of difference and otherness to create the conditions for genuine interactiveness with the public. The multicultural nature of dialogue is, for that matter, perceived as a chance to enrich the diversity of points of view. To rise to this challenge, the museum will promote dialogue between collections as diverse as prehistoric art, French eighteenth-century furnishings, the art of Islam, India and China, African art, contemporary art, and so on. Fields like fashion and film will not have to fight for their place. They will immediately feel at home in a museum that displays as much as possible all the diversity of artistic and cultural fields, or more precisely the universal element in each of them. This diversity, practically unique in the world of museums, is a universalist challenge in itself.
This openness naturally implies multidisciplinary approaches and interdisciplinary thought, with an art history that is open to history and societal issues and, for more ancient periods, an archeology that is receptive to anthropological questions. With a museography based on the beauty of the artworks and their power to captivate, the museum can provoke an experience of otherness, discovery and desire for exchange. The singular experience of its conception, associating through all of the major French museums the Agence France-Muséums, in direct connection with the Louvre, provides an opportunity to combine the fruitful experiences of these various institutions and to conceive of new projects.

Universalism — An historical and philosophical foundation

The Louvre Abu Dhabi in relation to the Louvre and French museums
Taking a universalist approach to a project is a challenge. Many see universalism today as the ideological corollary of the economic expansion of the West. Within this context, it needs to be reiterated here that to design a museum today from a universalist perspective is to consider the mission of this institution on the basis of dialogue, respect and teaching on the diversity of artistic and cultural expression. Universalism does not mean unilateralism. The question of the Louvre Abu Dhabi as a universal museum warrants clarification. Obviously, the answer is manifold and has to compare the different perspectives found within an unprecedented project.
The first, and most obvious, perspective of the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s universalism stems from the history of museums and particularly that of the Louvre, whose excellence will be conveyed by the future institution. The palace that became the Muséum National in 1793 was a product of the encyclopedic thought of the Enlightenment and of the French Revolution.

The day before the Louvre was to open as the Muséum National, the French Minister of the Interior Roland defined the framework for the undertaking in a letter addressed to the painter Jacques-Louis David: “The Museum should display the great treasures possessed by the nation in the form of drawings, paintings, sculptures, and other monuments of art. As I conceive it, it should attract and interest foreigners; it should stimulate the appreciation of the fine arts, give pleasure to amateurs and serve as a school for artists; it should be open to everyone […] The foundation will be a national one, and not a single person should be barred from it. […] The national Museum will be the basis of the highest forms of civilization and the subject of universal admiration […].”
Sharing artistic wealth, educational mission, national dimension and cultural outreach — all the historical bases of the universal museum have thus been established and in many respects are found today in the creation of the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The Louvre serves here as a model and a reference, but these must be adapted to a new context, to accurately meet the major challenge of the agreement of March 6, 2007, and to meet the fundamental demand for cultural transfer between France and Abu Dhabi. The challenge of this transfer is all the more complex and exhilarating in that it has a twofold focus on innovation and historical and museum tradition. This challenge offers the Louvre and French museums the potential to show their capacity to create, together, a museum of the twenty-first century.

In the image of the architectural project by Jean Nouvel who invents a museum-city, a city-world through a variation on the forms of Arab architecture, the universalism of the Louvre Abu Dhabi must give rise to a genuine cultural mix. In this respect, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will demonstrate its universality first and foremost by its collections. The geographical, historical and cultural reality of Abu Dhabi is that of a bridge between the East and West, understood in their broadest sense, to which the United Arab Emirates’s request to France has given an added dimension with strong symbolism. How can one not henceforth wish for this gesture of trust and openness toward others to be one of openness to the world’s artistic diversity? Because the history of the Louvre Abu Dhabi is just starting to be written, it is easier for us to unlock the potential of this wide range of approaches from the outset. In this, we are brought back to the original founding of the Louvre, when its universal vocation, undertaken to the scale authorized by the knowledge of the time, was accomplished. Over time, this desire for universality extended to other Parisian and national museums — the creation of the Musée Guimet, followed by the Musée national d’art moderne, the Musée d’Orsay and more recently the Musée du Quai Branly —, and has thus been transposed to a national level. But it persists nonetheless; the Louvre thus extends an invitation, still today, to discover the history of humanity through its collection of artworks, to gain an understanding of the world today by discovering and observing the creation of yesterday.
The Louvre’s universalist postulate, closely connected to its name, invites us to consider for the Louvre Abu Dhabi a consolidation of this long museum-building process. A consolidation undertaken in the 6,000 sq.m of permanent galleries and the 2,000 sq.m of temporary exhibition space, where the pooling of French public collections, and the museum’s own collection, will foster new exchanges and authorize innovative museographic developments to better address visitor diversity. The choice of artworks presented, with regard to their rather limited number — 600 artworks are planned for the opening of the museum, combining loans from French collections and acquisitions for the museum’s own collection—is a key issue. They will have to provide the museum with a singular and ongoing discourse, while giving visitors the opportunity to encounter artistic creation and enjoy the esthetics of art. In this respect, the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s acquisition policy, steered by Agence France-Muséums curators, in conjunction with the major heritage departments of France, must be a reflection of this broad openness to artistic diversity. Inscribed by its name and creation in the community of great international museums, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is, naturally, called to be a full member and to play a major role. It will thus serve as an important center for art history and research in this region of the world, providing an opportunity to introduce and support specific programs in the fields of its collections and its new approaches.

The challenges of the museum’s educational role

Carried by a desire to promote an unprecedented cultural transfer between France and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will play a major educational role. It will remain true to the educational missions of the Louvre and the French museums that were at the heart of the creation in 1793, and are renewed to this day. Involvement in the Ecole du Louvre project, being a shareholder of the Agence France-Muséums and the Institut national du patrimoine, provides an opportunity to conceive, starting today, of training programs for future museum employees, combining theoretical teaching and work placements in French museums. These work placements will establish strong, long-lasting ties between the French professionals and their future Emirate colleagues, thus creating the conditions for rich dialogue between the Louvre Abu Dhabi and French museums. The launch in Abu Dhabi, scheduled for November 2010, of a Masters in Museum Studies, teaming for the first time the Ecole du Louvre and the Université Paris IV Sorbonne, underlines the strength of this French commitment. The courses, given by university professors and museum professionals, in French, English and Arabic, at the Paris Sorbonne Louvre Abu Dhabi faculty, will enable students, many of whom are from the Emirates, to obtain an internationally recognized diploma from the two institutions, leading to research work for those who wish to take their career in this direction.

In addition, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will be a privileged location for discovery and research in archeology and art history, welcoming researchers and scientists. The transfer of knowledge, a core mission of the Louvre and French museums, will thus also be one of the major roles of the future museum.

The opportunity for a cultural project shared by two nations, an unprecedented collaborative venture for French museums

Singular and unprecedented for Abu Dhabi, the Louvre Abu Dhabi project is equally so for France and French museums. Through the conditions created by the intergovernmental agreement, this is in fact the first time that France is putting its skills and cultural knowledge toward another sovereign nation, a core element of its overriding mission, upheld by a museum tradition over two hundred years old, but also a driving force for renewal at the dawn of the twenty-first century. This foundation is a challenge, but it is also a great opportunity for the Louvre and French museums. A chance to show how the French museum institution, sometimes seen as fusty and archaic, is capable of designing and developing an international project to the highest standard, through dialogue and respect for the Abu Dhabi identity.

It also offers an opportunity for a remarkable cooperation between the museums engaged, through the Agence France-Muséums, in the design of the future museum. Reunited by the Louvre name, as a symbol of universalism and excellence, the partner institutions are putting their experience and expertise toward the project, immediately making the nascent museum part of their community. The work groups that include these partners in all of the museum’s missions — education and training policy, editorial and audiovisual programs, cultural programs, and collection management in particular — promote new dialogue between the institution and French museums, with the promise of mutual enrichment. As a long-term project of transfer between two nations, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will return the favor in France as well.

Based on an original scientific and cultural project, nurtured by the museum and cultural values symbolized by the Louvre name, the Louvre Abu Dhabi project thus places the museum’s primary missions—to preserve, develop, exhibit and explain—at the heart of its creation. It is, there again, and no doubt primarily, one of the greatest opportunities of this project, which gives new impetus to museum professions by underscoring their dynamism and creativity, even stronger now that they are nourished by the demands of loyalty to a remarkable tradition.