In the first major display of its collection outside Abu Dhabi, more than 160 of the finest masterpieces from Louvre Abu Dhabi’s permanent collection are to be showcased in Paris.
The exhibition will provide visitors to the famous Musée du Louvre, with a preview of the museum that is set to open late next year in the Saadiyat Cultural District, and will run from 2nd May to 28th July in the French capital.
Visitors to the exhibition, titled Birth of a Museum, will be able to explore artworks from ancient times including one of the finest examples of a standing Bactrian Princess from the end of the 3rd millennium BCE, a Middle-Eastern gold bracelet with a lion’s head approximately 3,000 years-old and a painting by Oman Hemdy Bey from the 1878, titled A Young Emir Studying.
“It is with much anticipation that we share these treasures internationally,” said HE Sheikh Sultan bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture Authority (TCA Abu Dhabi). “This is a significant milestone for Louvre Abu Dhabi, that translates an important moment of history where both countries, UAE and France have collaborated and shared a vision enabling this achievement to be realised. The introduction to audiences outside Abu Dhabi provides an insight into the concept of Louvre Abu Dhabi and the museum as a place of cross-cultural dialogue and exchanges.”
Situated in the Cultural District in Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi will be a universal museum designed to house aesthetic expressions of different civilisations and cultures from the most ancient to the most contemporary, and is set to sit alongside the Zayed National Museum and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
Construction of the museum is on schedule, with the completion of the first gallery of what will be an iconic structure announced this week.
The first completed gallery, which is one of the largest within the permanent galleries, comes a year after work on the ground started.
With more than 5,300 workers on site daily and around 117,000 cubic metres of concrete poured so far, the construction work on the galleries is progressing in parallel with the installation of the museum’s prominent dome which features 85 steel segments that weigh between 30 to 70 tonnes each. To date, 20 per cent of the dome’s structure has been put in place, with the completion of the full structural steel frame set for September 2014.
Ali Al Hammadi, Deputy Managing Director at TDIC, said: “We’re happy with where we are today. To date, more than 10 million man hours have been dedicated to Louvre Abu Dhabi reflecting the amount of foundation work that the museum requires. Despite the challenging and complicated design, construction on the ground has been progressing steadily and on schedule. Over the course of one year, we’ve moved from construction at seven metres deep to above ground construction of the galleries.”
Designed by Pritzker-Prize winning architect Jean Nouvel, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will encompass 9,200 square metres of art galleries.
