East meets West as Louvre Abu Dhabi opens
Abu Dhabi opens its Louvre museum on Saturday, positioning itself as a city of cultural tourism with a display of hundreds of works that it hopes will draw visitors from around the world.
Surrounded by water from three sides, the museum houses 600 artworks it has acquired, alongside 300 works on loan from 13 leading French institutions, in its 23 permanent galleries. The artists range from Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh to Pablo Picasso and Cy Twombly.
French President Emmanuel Macron will be the guest of honor at the opening ceremony along with other heads of state.
Among the paintings is one by Leonardo Da Vinci, done between 1495 and 1499 and called, La Belle Ferronniere, or Portrait of an Unknown Woman, which was recently restored and is on loan from the original Musee du Louvre in Paris.
The Abu Dhabi museum was set up under a 2007 inter-governmental agreement between Paris and Abu Dhabi. Originally slated to open in 2012, it was delayed by the global financial crisis and then by low oil prices, which led the United Arab Emirates to rein in spending.
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