LOUVRE ABU DHABI

The two words "Louvre Abu Dhabi" in themselves evoke an original symbiosis: the Louvre, a universal museum with its heritage from the Age of Enlightenment, the richness of its collections, and the diversity of its public through the ages. Abu Dhabi, a land of welcome for all nations, which is developing at a frenetic pace. In 2007, the government of the United Arab Emirates joined forces with France to give everyone access to culture by creating a unique but universal museum that tells the story of humanity.

An educational museum: museums of national antiquities have existed in the United Arab Emirates since the 1970s and trace a long human settlement. The Al Ain museum includes pottery that attests to a long exchange between the region, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. The education departments have been working for several years with different segments of the Abu Dhabi population to educate the youngest, because that's where it all starts. Already four pilot schools in the city are working with the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Ministry of Education to train teachers in art history. In the same vein, the Children's Museum at the Louvre Abu Dhabi offers temporary exhibitions with real works of art on display and educational workshops. It is a true educational mission to develop the artistic talents of the youngest visitors, with an approach to the subject matter and an apprenticeship of the eye, which is thus intended and implemented within the institution itself.

A contemporary and attractiveuniversal museum : the Louvre Abu Dhabi incorporates the latest technologies to capture the attention of a public more accustomed to the frenetic pace of new media than to apprehending works of the past. Curators, managers, mediators, signage specialists and receptionists work in dialogue and innovation to set up a modern and thematic scenography: interactive terminals punctuate the rooms. A theater under the dome can also host concerts, conferences and shows. Yoga classes are organized every week under the dome.

An innovative museum: the display cases were designed in Belgium, in Ghent, using an ultra-white glass with a very low iron content that favors the transmission of light while reducing the greenish tint of standard glass, resulting in exceptional clarity. There will be no glare on your photos. More than a hundred of them have been made without metal structures, giving visitors the impression that the works are floating in their environment. Each of them has its own hydrometric control adapted to the objects it contains.

A resilient museum: how to erect a museum, with its precise conservation constraints, in a desert area, often humid and moreover under a dome filtering a "rain of light" and surrounded by water? Water, light and heat, three antinomic elements adapted to the very location of the museum. Thus, a whole technological arsenal had to be put in place to control the temperature, limited to 21 degrees (with a maximum variation of one degree), which must compensate for the outside heat penetrating through the ceilings of each of the galleries. The natural light comes in from above and combines with the artificial light. It is also essential to adjust the acceptable light levels according to the time of day and to protect the art pieces.

A museum that tells the story of humanity chronologically and thematically: the permanent galleries present key and significant works along a unique path that tells "The history of humanity in 12 chapters". Each gallery corresponds to a chapter. To begin the visit, the large hallway is a huge navigation map. On the floor, the lines of the Emirates' shoreline are drawn, punctuated by place names evoking the provenance of the Louvre Abu Dhabi's collections. Several showcases raise the question of the universal. In each of them, several objects from different civilizations call out to the visitor on the same theme, such as death, motherhood, dance, etc. The similarities are not explained, but question. The visitor can then begin his chrono-thematic journey. On the same time scale are presented works representing different civilizations. The presentation is centered on four major periods: archaeology and the birth of civilization; the medieval period and the birth of Islam; the classical period from humanism to the Enlightenment; and modern and contemporary art, beginning at the end of the 18th century.

This is the specificity of this universal museum. Unlike traditional European encyclopedic museums, which present their collections by type of art (painting, sculpture, art objects, etc.) and by geographical area, the Louvre Abu Dhabi places the art of the world's different civilizations on the same time scale, "our era. For example, a Samurai suit of armor from the Edo period can be found next to an Oba head with a Jordaens painting as its backdrop.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi thus constitutes a shared universal memory. The dialogue between the works of art, sculptures and objects reveals the common influences and reciprocal historical links between civilizations and cultures. It is an initiatory journey that makes us aware that everything is linked. The presentation of a true dialogue between cultures creates a complete history of art.

How do I get around the museum? You start with the permanent galleries and discover the dome at the end of the tour. If you have not taken a guided tour or audio guide, we recommend that you read the introduction located at the entrance to each gallery. To find out if the works are part of the Louvre Abu Dhabi permanent collection, simply read the label on the work. If the work is not part of the permanent collection, the name of the lending museum is indicated. It takes 90 minutes to walk through the galleries and 30 minutes for the dome, with additional time for the temporary exhibitions located in buildings accessed through the dome.

The tour of the permanent galleries is complemented by the programming of two temporary exhibitions (there are four per year), all mounted by one of the thirteen French partner museums and organized by France Museums, an international cultural engineering agency created in 2007 from the intergovernmental agreement between the United Arab Emirates and France to create and support the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Stunning architecture. "I want this building to be the image of a protected territory that belongs to the Arab world and to this geography Drawing inspiration from the place and the context, from the history of forms as well as from the fundamentals of Middle Eastern architecture, Jean Nouvel has traced the personality of this universal museum: "I like to adapt eternal themes of architecture (...) diverting them, reinterpreting them through a new approach."

Selected to design this museum, Jean Nouvel was guided by the exceptionality of the site of Saadiyat, a virgin lagoon island, between the sand and the sea, between light and shadow. His project promises the future visitor an architectural experience of great intensity, in the service of a dialogue between cultures. Like an umbrella, its steel dome of 180 m in diameter, 7,500 tons of steel on the outside and aluminum on the inside, covers two thirds of the city-museum. Reminiscent of the mosque, mausoleum, caravanserai and medersa, its form is free: open to the water, resting on four massive and discreet support points, it finds a virtuoso and contemporary expression. Its elevation takes on flat proportions that allow the city to slip in, nature to settle in, thanks to the penetration of light, which varies constantly.

In a dialogue of forms inherited from the architectural tradition, as much as through the experience of the senses, Jean Nouvel has drawn on an intense and founding relationship: that of shadow and light, that of their climatic equivalence, coolness and heat. "It is a microclimate that is created, drawing on sensations explored many times through great Arabic architecture, which is a game on the mastery of light and geometry (...) a structure of shadow, path and discovery." Indeed, above the walking spaces, the dome network is very tight, while it is very open above the temporary exhibition spaces to reduce the temperature in the outdoor spaces and bring natural light to the exhibition spaces.

"A peninsula city that moves forward into the water and uses that water in the shade to create a microclimate phenomenon thanks to the wind that enters under the dome." This is how the dome "hybridizes" under the free inspiration of the moucharabieh, another of the elements inherited from the past, which owes as much to oriental decorative arts as to a traditional mode of air conditioning. Animated by a random grid of star-shaped perforations, skilfully calculated, and traversed by light, the dome tempers the rooms and modules of the underlying museum, while at the same time shading the interior walkway, favoring natural air conditioning and lighting.

The "rain of light" from the dome falls from the dome as it would from the leaves of the date palm through which the sun shines under the palm grove. Moving, tactile, this shining shadow opens the building to "a play on randomness, which allows to dose the light according to the needs of the place". In the same way, the shimmering space of the water entering under the dome offers a vibration of the light which is reflected on the "skin" of the buildings. This presence, this permanent undulation, reminds us of the importance and value of water in Arab architecture. At night, the site is instead "an oasis of light under a constellated dome."

Freely inspired by the buried cities and the prototype of the oriental city, a large part of the complex lies in the shelter and comfort of this shade. Urbanity and almost spontaneous geometry, a "medina" of rooms, like the district of a city, lets out about thirty buildings along a promenade. Raised to heights varying from 4 to 10 m, they showcase facades that are all different and animated by various openings, creating transitions and singular passages. This museum-city draws a space that plays with the relationship between inside and outside, changing, multiple, poetic, that sharpens the curiosity and reserves to the visitor paths to discover, with the light as a guide.