![]() In a moment of humility, HE Mubarak Al Muhairi admits that “rather than going out on our own, and perhaps failing, these museums bring the know-how and expertise that does not exist in the UAE.” Considering that in 1961 Abu Dhabi had only one school, he makes a valid point. With a Louvre museum designed by Jean Nouvel, a Guggenheim by Frank Gehry and the Zayed National Museum by Norman Foster all under construction on the island, another point of contention has been the concept of buying culture from the West. It is an important part of our economic and social plan.” Perhaps you could ask this question in London or Paris where there are hundreds of museums, but not here. Today we are in a different time as we search for interconnectedness. Still, is the concept of a universal museum - one that aims to cover a continuum of ancient to contemporary art from all cultures and civilizations - outdated? The Director General of Abu Dhabi Tourism & Culture, HE Mubarak Al Muhairi, told Flash Art: “For too long museums have been Western-centric. Under the 2007 intergovernmental agreement to create and define the first universal museum in the Arab world, the Louvre Abu Dhabi will display its own collection as well as rotating loans from the French National museums. And while there are unresolved tensions - for example between the museographical elements of a didactic historical narrative and the pure aesthetics of many of these works - the museum remains committed to what Laurence des Cars, curatorial director of Agence France-Muséums, calls “a global reading of the history of the world” - one that by necessity will evolve. The first gallery, for example, sees various figurations of the female body: a late third millennium BCE Bactrian princess stands alongside a Cypriot idol-statuette and Yves Klein’s Anthropometry (1960). In response to questions that have circulated around the new museum - Is it a Western Museum? Is it merely an annex of the Paris institution? - “Birth of a Museum” reveals that the thematic narrative at its core is a comparative, cross-cultural approach to art history. Divided into 10 thematic sections, on display are 130 of the 300 artworks already acquired. Following a number of delays and setbacks with the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s construction, the exhibition gives viewers a tangible hint of what to expect when the museum officially opens in 2015. On April 22, 2013, the much-anticipated Louvre Abu Dhabi exhibition “Birth of a Museum” opened in the galleries of Manarat Al Saadiyat on Saadiyat Island - Abu Dhabi’s ambitious cultural district expected to be completed by 2020. He also dedicates himself to personal documentary photography projects and has participated in various exhibitions.Birth of a Museum, vernissage. in the Galleria Borghese in Rome, the Vatican Museums, the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, the Archaeological Park in Pompeii, the Papal Palace in Avignon, the Open Air Museum in Göreme (Cappadocia), the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul, the Monastery of Deir Mar Musa al Habasci (Damascus). The opening hours of the exhibition correspond to those of the Photo Collectionĭomenico Ventura: After graduating in History of Medieval Art, Ventura specialized in the photographic documentation of works of art, carrying out photographic campaigns for scientific publications, exhibition catalogs, restoration sites and archaeological excavations in Italy and abroad. Are the walls an obstacle to change, or rather a symbol of the constantly changing relationship between the city and its people? ![]() Mixing, reshaping and abandonment determine the selection of images with a strong documentary character. The photographs also focus on the transitions between the urban space and rural areas: In fact the ancient gardens cultivated by the "inhabitants of the walls" are still preserved as one of the oldest historical cultivated landscapes in the Mediterranean, but they are seriously endangered by modern urban planning. This exhibition aims to explore the monument in the context of a city that is undergoing a rapid modernization process while being visibly in touch with its past. Domenico Ventura has walked the walls from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara with his camera several times since 2009, always carrying with him the chronicles of the conquest of the city in 1453 as well as the travel reports by Edmondo de Amicis from 1874.
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