Guggenheim Ready For Abu Dhabi
A briefing last night about the agreement signed between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the government of Abu Dhabi was long on rhetoric about cultural exchange, and short on details — such as the financial terms of the deal.
The director of the Guggenheim Foundation, Thomas Krens, told an audience of trustees, New York cultural leaders, and press that the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi would be, at 450,000 square feet, the largest Guggenheim in the world. The chairman of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, Sheikh Sultan Bin Tahnoon Al Nahyan, highlighted that the museum's staff would include a significant number of United Arab Emirates nationals, thus creating new career opportunities. The government of Abu Dhabi is developing a 1-square-mile cultural district on Saadiyat Island, just off the capital city of Abu Dhabi, which will include four museums and a performing arts center, all designed by celebrity architects. Last March, the French government announced that it was receiving $520 million for the use of the Louvre's name for one of the museums, plus another $747 million for loans of art, special exhibitions, and management advice.
Mr. Krens did not say how much the Guggenheim would receive. He read from the museum's mission statement, which included a pledge to collect and display art "from a broadly international perspective, while sustaining the heritage of [the museum's] local environment." He said that the Guggenheim and Abu Dhabi would collaborate to build a "world-class collection of international art" for the museum. (The collection will be owned by Abu Dhabi.)
Frank Gehry presented his design for the museum, which consists of boxy galleries arranged in roughly concentric circles, and conical shades, which Mr. Gehry compared to teepees, over outdoor spaces. Mr. Gehry described the proportions of some of the galleries as "playful," like those of the galleries in Bilbao — which, he said, "at first everybody worried about." He added: "Well, Tom never worried, but curators always worry about anything that's different."
At one point, Mr. Gehry also took a joking swipe at Mr. Krens's plan for a Guggenheim in Guadalajara, Mexico, to be designed by Enrique Norten. In experiments with the Abu Dhabi design, "[w]e tried going high-rise, since the Guggenheim's working on a high-rise museum in Mexico — which I don't think really works," he said.
The chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi TDIC, Lee Tabler, said that construction is already underway on a link road that will provide 15-minute access to the museums from the Abu Dhabi International Airport. Commercial development is also in progress elsewhere on Saadiyat Island, with five major resort hotels in the works, and Gary Player set to design what Mr. Tabler called "the Arabian gulf's first oceanfront golf course." Mr. Tabler's use of the term "Arabian gulf," to refer to what Iranians call the Persian Gulf, was a reminder that the Guggenheim is staking a foothold in a part of the world characterized by complex national and ethnic identities, and intense political jockeying. But Mr. Krens seemed, in his way, prepared to play on this competitive field. Referring to a map of the island showing all of the museums and the performing arts center, he pointed to the position of the Guggenheim and noted that it was "[c]learly the predominant part of the island — the prow of the island, so to speak."
In a related development, Human Rights Watch issued a press release yesterday saying that the Guggenheim had not responded to the organization's requests to meet and discuss how to protect the rights of migrant workers who participate in the construction of Mr. Gehry's building. The press release said that employers in the UAE routinely withhold wages and confiscate workers' passports.
