The Traveller's Magazine
France’s most popular museum is set to open a sister museum in Abu Dhabi, which plans to open in 2015. Already the museum has 300 loans coming from major French institutions for its opening year.
The loans will complement the museum’s permanent collection and reinforce the connection this Middle Eastern museum has with Western Europe. Some of the pieces being sent to Abu Dhabi include Leonardo da Vinci’s Portrait of an Unknown Woman (circa 1495), Eduard Manet’s The Fife Player (1866), Claude Monet’s The Saint-Lazare Station (1877) and Henri Matisse’s Still Life with Magnolia (1941).
The number of pieces on loan from French institutions will decrease over a ten year period as the Louvre Abu Dhabi works to build up its own collection. Some pieces will be on show for as long as two years. The museum’s collection will include a range of historic artworks and objects of both cultural and sociological significance, wit ha special emphasis on the Middle East.
The building itself is an ambitious project, with 64,000 square metres of space inside, it’s a collection of pavilions, plazas and canals that give the feeling of a city floating on water. For art lovers, this is one new museum that cannot be missed, catch flights to Abu Dhabi for 2015 and be one of the first to experience it.
