Although we’re a bit confused as to why there’s a second Louvre, let’s see what it’s all about.

Wednesday saw French President Emmanuel Macron unveil Abu Dhabi’s all new adaption of the famed Paris art museum.

Built over the last 10 years, the new museum permanently holds 600 artworks and showcases an extra 300 that are on loan from France.

The building’s architecture is being praised by critics for its latticed dome design, which allows the natural light of the desert sun to filter through while protecting visitors from the scalding heat.

Check this for a visual taste on what it’s all about:

Ooooph, that roof is sexy.

Macron called it a “bridge between civilisations” as it holds art and items related to history and religion from around the globe. How diplomatic.

He went on to say:

“Those who seek to say Islam is the destruction of other religions are liars.”

Okay, then.

Agreed upon in 2007 by the two nations, the project was intended to open in 2012, but was “delayed by the global financial crisis and plummeting oil prices, sending final cost soaring over its original $654m (over R9 billion) budget”.

On top of that:

[T]he museum is paying France hundreds of millions of dollars for the use of the Louvre name and for loans of artworks and managerial advice.

Oh, there it is.

After a lot of controversial attention was attracted to the project over the concerns about the welfare of its construction workers, critics have declared the finished product as:

A ‘mesmerising’ success, if with a ‘touch of bling’.

Classic example of a distraction leaving important controversies in the dust…

We all know that Europe’s Louvre is the original G, with millions of visitors every year – but the desert building is already starting to do for Abu Dhabi what its French counterpart did for Paris:

The Abu Dhabi building, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, brings to mind an Arab medina (an ancient quarter of a city).

None of its 55 rooms, including 23 permanent galleries, is alike.

What will you see? Well:

On show are works from around the world – from established European masters including Van Gogh, Gaugin and Picasso, to Americans such as James Abbott McNeill Whistler (his painting Whistler’s Mother, above) and the modern Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Among the priceless artefacts on show are a statue of a sphinx dating back to the 6th Century BC and a frieze depicting figures from the Koran.

If you’re in Abu Dhabi, doors open to the public this Saturday with tickets priced at 60 dirhams (R231). Not bad.

But, oh ja, umm, they’re sold out.

[source:bbc]