On the heels of several major achievements for the institution and the launch of new programmes, as well as a significant number of new artworks in the galleries Louvre Abu Dhabi celebrates its second-year anniversary.
Since opening in 2017, Louvre Abu Dhabi has welcomed over two million visitors from around the world who have come to enjoy the museum’s rich cross-cultural collection, eight ground-breaking international exhibitions, and a range of cultural programmes for people of all ages and backgrounds.
The institution has further solidified its commitment to education, inaugurating the Children’s Museum in July 2019 – the first museum of its kind in the Arab world – and welcoming over 60,000 student visits while offering training and job opportunities for Emiratis and the local community.
HE Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, Chairman of The Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi said, “Two years ago, we launched this museum as a gift from Abu Dhabi to the world. Our vision was for a truly universal museum, a place that shines a light on our shared humanity through an incredible collection of artworks and artefacts from every corner of the globe. Today, I could not be prouder of how that vision has been brought to life. Louvre Abu Dhabi celebrates the connections between cultures and tells a story of our collective history, present and future – a story that is now even more important in a world that tends to focus more on our differences than our similarities.”
Highlights in the galleries include: a dagger with a lion-shaped handle (1100–600 BCE) excavated at Saruq al-Hadid in Dubai and on loan from Dubai Municipality; the monumental Egyptian marble Portrait of Cleopatra? (305–30 BCE, Ptolemaic Dynasty), a recent Louvre Abu Dhabi acquisition; a silver vase decorated with biblical figures (575–625) from Emesa (modern Homs, Syria), on loan from Musée du Louvre; a bronze aquamanile in the form of a peacock (972) from Spain, also on loan from Musée du Louvre; Rembrandt’s Head of a Young Man, with Clasped Hands: Study of the Figure of Christ, from ca. 1648-56; the portrait of Francis the First, King of France (1539 CE) by Tiziano Vecellio (Titian), on loan from Musée du Louvre; an Imperial armor from18th-century China, on loan from Musée des Arts Décoratifs; Francesco Primaticcio’s Laocoon and his Sons (Laocoon et ses fils) on loan from Château de Fontainebleau and Chinese imperial jades from the Qing dynasty (imperial seal decorated with two dragons and Ruyi scepter), on loan from Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet.
New works have been installed in the museum’s modern and contemporary galleries, including Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun’s Portrait of Countess Skavronskaia (1761-1829), Lady of Honor of Catherine II, Empress of Russia on loan from Musée du Louvre, The Seine and the Louvre (La Seine et le Louvre) by Camille Pissarro (1903) on loan from Musée d’Orsay, Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker (Le Penseur) (1881-1882) on loan from Musée Rodin, Van Gogh in a landscape (Van Gogh dans un Paysage) by Francis Bacon (1957) and Syrian painter Marwan Kassab-Bhaci’s Mann mit grüner Weste (Man in a Green Waistcoat) (1967), both on loan from Centre Pompidou – Musée national d’art moderne, as well as Emirati artist Mohammed Ahmed Ibrahim’s works Window 1 (Fenêtre 1) and Untitled 1, both from 2016 and both on loan from Centre Pompidou – Musée national d’art moderne.
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