Luxurious Erudition
The Abu Dhabi Louvre
The new Louvre will raise in the “cultural district” of Saaya Island, 500 metres offshore Abu Dhabi City, together with the biggest world branch of the Guggenheim Museum, of the Maritime Museum and of the Biennial Park, hosting 19 exhibition pavilions.
According to a recent survey by Future Concept Lab for Bank Americard, products and services are becoming “culturally and emotionally important; they determine new aesthetics and a new consumer culture, where happiness derived from luxury expands to new targets based on the experience and memory that it generates”.
Indeed, if in this marketing era, communication is indirectly forced in its words, channels and approaches, culture is sometimes forced as well: the new trends and limits of style and of cultural wealth do not stand in doing but rather in knowing. And obviously, if it is possible to find and express “knowledge” while immersed in fascinating and breathtaking sceneries, the crystal marriage between luxury and the pleasure to find and enrich culture becomes certainty.
The world of luxury is an extreme field, where human beings are allowed to experience very peculiar conditions and where events turn out to feature emphasized and particular characteristics. In Abu Dhabi all this is possible. In an environment dominated by impressive buildings, solutions, objects and where you can find anything you may ever want, in utmost wealth, the concept of luxury is transforming into the culture of luxury: where luxury itself, losing its physical connotations and gaining a more “philosophical value”, is no longer connected to the merely financial value of “price”. Anyone heard about the Louvre and the MOMA, but not everyone knows that Abu Dhabi aims to become one of the world’s capitals of the new culture.
In 1791, two events took place, at first glance unrelated to each other: the Bedouin tribe Bani Yas, upon discovery of a spring of freshwater in the Persian Gulf, founded the settlement, which was later to become the emirate of Abu Dhabi; several thousand kilometres away, in Paris, the constituent assembly of post-revolution France issued the National decree on the royal art collection, with which it announced the opening of the Louvre, the first public museum. Today, 216 years later, the Louvre and Abu Dhabi suddenly have a lot in common: the capital of the Arab Emirates is going to have its Louvre.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has in fact commissioned Frank O. Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid, some of the most important names in the world of architecture, to build on an island just outside the Arab metropolis, what is supposed to become the most spectacular concentration of museums worldwide and likely to become one of the most important cultural destinations of the world. This probably helps to understand the evolution of social luxury oriented behaviours, resulting from the transformation process going through the whole sector of contemporary luxury. This is actually moving away from the opulence of materialistic showing-off to the gentleness of immaterial emotions.
Luxury, the culture of beauty, exclusiveness, timeless pleasure: these are the “key words” that move the “luxury cultural-consumer”. The Abu Dhabi Louvre is about to become one of the biggest companies worldwide in the field of art galleries. The adoption of such name has been negotiated through an agreement with the Louvre Museum in Paris (French agency for Museums and the Ministry of Culture and Communication), the use of the name “Louvre” will be valid for 30 years.
Opening in 2012: the new Louvre will be built in the “cultural district” of the Saadiyat Island, 500 metres offshore Abu Dhabi City, together with the biggest worldwide branch of the Guggenheim Museum, the Maritime Museum and the Biennial Park, hosting 19 exhibition pavilions.
According to the digital version of the project designed by French architect Jean Nouvel and approved after a closed door meeting in the capital of the seven Arab Emirates, the new Louvre Abu Dhabi will be similar in shape to a colossal flying saucer, the Museum will lie under the monumental dome, surrounded by palm trees and water.
“Abu Dhabi chose an institution that has always been committed to reaching the essence of the human nature through the contemplation of a work of art”, the French former President Jacque Chirac declared. “Born from the ancient collections of the Kingdom of France and enriched by works collected over more than two centuries, the Louvre has been deeply convinced since its establishment that art is a universal message. With the Louvre, the Emirate pays tribute to this classical heritage and commits to enhancing the importance of the past, while looking at the future”. “The total cost of the operation is 700 million Euro”, reports the French daily newspaper Le Monde, amount for which the French government not only conceded the prestigious brand-name. In fact, the Middle Eastern museum, while waiting for the creation of its own collections with the assistance of a team of experts, will be guaranteed to host 4 temporary exhibitions over a 10 year period and to host borrowed works of art from prestigious French museums. At the same time an education program will be carried on for the new generations, with the aim to create a local leadership ready for the future management of this business. There are many rumours about three zero figures cashed in by the government that will be used to finance the restoration of an area for the grouping of non-displayed works of art in Paris, that is the pavilion de Flore of the Louvre, currently hosting a refreshment centre, destined to the “exhibition of collections that have never been displayed before.”
One floor of this section will be named after Sheikh Zayed, founder of the UAE, who died 3 years ago, as an acknowledgement for the 25 million Euro patronage donations done by the Emirate. Another 10 million Euro will be destined to the Fontainebleau Castle, in the Parisian area of l’Ile de France. Those who appreciate luxury will appreciate the Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum. For Abu Dhabi this project represents only a small section of cultural tourism and development project for Saadiyat Island (the island of happiness) with a cost amounting to over 20.7 billion Euro.
Arts And Culture, Culture, Destinations, Exhibitions And Galleries, Museums, Travel And Holidays,
Tags: Frank O. Gehry, Guggenheim Museum, Jean Nouvel, Louvre, Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum, Paris, Tadao Ando, United Arab Emirates, Zaha Hadid
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