Louvre Abu Dhabi
Opened with fanfare in 2017, the Louvre Abu Dhabi is the primary world museum sited within the Arab world. Its common narrative of the event of artwork has resulted in a much wider illustration of cultures than is often present in European or American establishments. Underneath its director Manuel Rabaté, the Louvre has skilfully navigated between its Arab house and its French partnerships, which has meant a collection of high-value works resembling Degas’s The Bellelli Household and da Vinci’s La Belle Ferronnière coming to Saadiyat Island. The introduction of the Richard Mille Artwork Prize in 2021, which awards the UAE’s solely main artwork prize to modern artists from the area, has additional cemented the Louvre’s connections to the local people.
Saadiyat Island, louvreabudhabi.ae
The Cultural Basis in Abu Dhabi is the devoted house of native arts and tradition, placing on exhibitions, workshops and youngsters’s occasions
Courtesy of Cultural Basis, Division of Tradition & Tourism
Cultural Basis
Abu Dhabi’s Cultural Basis is probably the most traditionally important arts establishment within the capital. It was opened by Sheikh Zayed, the founding father of the nation, in 1981, and served for twenty years because the open and amorphous house of all kinds of cultural occasions, placing on all the pieces from exhibitions and screenings to e-book gala’s and youngsters’s piano and ballet recitals. Situated close to the Corniche within the coronary heart of the outdated metropolis, it serves an essential social operate for Abu Dhabi’s totally different demographics.
After it closed in 2009, rumours unfold that it was slated for demolition, however it was saved on account of interventions by key cultural figures. Reopening after important renovation in 2018, it had new and remodelled galleries, studio areas, a library and a theatre. Underneath the path of Reem Fadda on the Division of Tradition and Tourism, it has turn into an essential web site for the performing arts from the broader Arab area. It additionally places on trendy exhibits, resembling retrospectives of native filmmaker and photographer Farah Al Qasimi and the essential Modernist Moroccan painter Mohamed Melehi.
Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum Road, culturalfoundation.ae
The NYUAD Artwork Gallery was opened in partnership with New York College and has a remit of scholarship and humanities programming
Courtesy of The NYU Abu Dhabi Artwork Gallery
NYUAD Artwork Gallery
As a gallery hooked up to New York College’s Saadiyat Island campus, NYUAD Artwork Gallery has carried ahead the establishment’s remit of scholarship and severe programming. Led by its founding director Maya Allison, it has pursued historic exhibits, resembling a survey of the UAE’s “pioneering era”, the artists who coalesced round Hassan Sharif within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s, and a broader view of artwork within the Gulf states from the early twentieth century to the current.
NYU Abu Dhabi campus on Saadiyat Island, nyuad-artgallery.org
Abu Dhabi’s Engage101 places on exhibitions by younger artists in distinctive areas
Courtesy Engage101
Engage101
The roving platform of Engage101 started as a solution to rethink how younger artists travelled via the prevailing gallery system within the UAE. Led by Gulf arts researcher Gaith Abdulla, Engage101 presents quarterly exhibitions of younger artists in numerous areas throughout the UAE, from the Dubai arts centre Alserkal Avenue to the studio of Afra Al Dhaheri (one of many shortlisted artists) within the industrial space of Mussafah on Abu Dhabi’s outskirts. Costs are intentionally saved reasonably priced as a way to transfer artwork out of the posh sector and into the broader neighborhood. Engage101 additionally commissions and hosts important writing on its web site, with a selected give attention to the postcolonial panorama of the Gulf. It additionally, with companions resembling Aisha Alabbar Gallery and Bayt Al Mamzar in Dubai, conducts authentic analysis on the UAE arts ecosystem.
101.artwork
Multi-purpose area Manarat Al Saadiyat sits amid what’s going to turn into one of many cultural centres of the still-developing Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi
Courtesy of Manarat Al Saadiyat
Manarat Al Saadiyat
The low-slung, cavernous Manarat Al Saadiyat is a bit like that good friend who clothes in a completely totally different type at each social gathering: who’s she, actually? Just a few years after the Cultural Basis closed quickly, Manarat Al Saadiyat assumed the function of a multi-purpose artwork area for town and stays the venue for a lot of of its prime artwork occasions, together with the November truthful Abu Dhabi Artwork. Run by town’s Division of Tradition and Tourism, it hosts pop-up exhibitions all year long.
Saadiyat Island, manaratalsaadiyat.ae
Situated within the Zayed Port space of Abu Dhabi, 421 was based in 2015 inside a renovated warehouse
Courtesy 421
421
Although 421 was solely 5 years outdated at the beginning of the pandemic, the general public gallery’s curatorial workforce took the chance to analyse their identification and methodology—they ended up reinventing themselves as an formidable, experimental gallery dedicated to course of. Nearly all of the exhibits now come out of programmes resembling mentorships and workshops, which place as a lot emphasis on improvement duties as on the ultimate exhibition. Led by director Faisal Al Hassan, the outcome has been a collection of sturdy group and solo exhibits that really feel particularly related to the UAE neighborhood. An exhibition on meals sources – a typical matter today in modern artwork – yielded revelations on labour and identification amongst Emirati, Arab and South Asian UAE-based artists, whereas in 2021 a present about feminism by Abu Dhabi’s Banat Collective sited the discourse particularly within the Gulf.
Zayed Port, 421.on-line
