Art
What You’ll See in the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s Billion-Dollar Art Collection
The unconventional museum has created one of the world’s great gatherings of art in the space of a decade.
A decade ago Abu Dhabi, the tiny, seaside capital of the UAE announced its partnership with the Louvre Museum in Paris. The announcement of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, dubbed “a universal museum in the Arab World,” was met with raised eyebrows—various news reports pegged the total fees paid to the Louvre in Paris at about $1 billion. (Representatives for the Louvre Abu Dhabi declined to comment on any dollar figures.)
And then… there was nothing. The museum was scheduled to open in 2012, with a massive, 260,000 square foot compound designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel, but construction deadlines were pushed back until it was announced that it would absolutely, definitely, 100 percent be open in mid November of 2017.