Louvre Abu Dhabi opening: What is in its billion-dollar art collection

Many of the modern works in the permanent collection seem to have been acquired during 2008 and 2009, when the market, rocked by the global recession, was a profound buyer's market.

There's a 1.1 metre high work by the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, Composition with Blue, Red, Yellow, and Black, which the lot notes indicate was acquired in 2009. (Six years later another, smaller Mondrian from the same period sold for $US50.6 million at Christie's New York.)

Similarly, a painting by the Impressionist Gustave Caillebotte, Game of Bezique, which was painted in 1880, was also purchased by the museum in 2009, as was Eduoard Manet's The Gypsy, painted between 1862 and 1867. A year later, the museum scored a coup by acquiring a work by Paul Gauguin's Children Wrestling from 1888 (also known as Breton Boys Wrestling). In 2012, another Gauguin painting of a Breton subject, Petit Breton A L'Oie, painted in 1889, sold for $US10 million at Sotheby's New York.

Over the years, as its collecting intensified, the museum branched out, with occasionally mixed results.

Its 1928 painting by the surrealist painter Ren Magritte, The Subjugated Reader, isn't a prime representation of Magritte's style (a work of roughly the same size by the artist, which he painted in the same year, sold for $US7.2 million at Christie's London in 2012), nor is a blue and white series of nine, eight and a half foot-high panels by Cy Twombly, which the artist painted three years before his death in 2008. (Currently, the market seems to value scale in Twombly's work rather than chronology: At Christie's New York next week, one painting by Twombly, painted in 1957, is estimated to sell for $20 million; another one, which is more than twice its size but painted in 2005, has a $40 million estimate.)

Curatorial Narrative

The true treasures of the Louvre Abu Dhabi seem to be its older works, which the museum has continued (and will continue) to acquire. There's a stunning head of the Buddha from Northern China, carved out of white marble in the mid 6th century, and an equally magnificent gold bracelet adorned with lions' heads, made in Iranian Azerbaijan in the 8th- 7th century BCE.

And if it's unclear how a gorgeous red Chinese-lacquer French commode from 1753 might highlight the museum's stated aim to "highlight universal themes and common influences," or if the connection between Giovanni Bellini's Mother and Child (1480- 1485) and an Egyptian sarcophagus from the 10th century BCE is tenuous, not to fear: There's been a strong curatorial attempt to weave all of these disparate objects together.

The galleries have been arranged both chronologically and thematically, so in the museum's "Great Vestibule," for instance, visitors are introduced to maternity and funerary rituals, while a room dedicated to "universal religions" includes a Gothic bible, a leaf from the magnificent c. 9th century Blue Quaran, and a Torah.

The Museum

The building, a gleaming white collection of 55 individual buildings underneath a massive, 180 metre-wide dome, is intended to be a destination in itself. Set on the long-stalled development project known as Saadiyat Island, the "museum city" that comprises the Louvre Abu Dhabi overlooks the water and includes museum galleries, temporary exhibition spaces, a two-story children's museum, a restaurant, cinema, and cafe.

The temporary exhibitions, with loans from the Louvre and elsewhere, will be changed four times a year. The inaugural show, which includes masterpieces by Manet, Monet, Matisse, and Leonardo da Vinci, focuses on the creation of the Louvre during the 18th century.

As a final flourish, the Louvre Abu Dhabi has commissioned several permanent outdoor works by art market stars of today. The Arte Povera artist Giuseppe Penone, who's co-represented by the two powerhouse galleries Gagosian and Marian Goodman, has made an installation which includes a "vast bronze tree," and the artist Jenny Holzer, who's represented by the New York gallery Cheim & Read, has made three engraved stone walls, into which various historical texts are carved.

All of this- the billions of dollars, the colossal building effort, and massive acquisition program- are part of what could be considered a 25 year-long attempt by cities around the globe to recreate the "Bilbao Effect." It's a term that was used to describe the restorative impact brought about by Frank Gehry's famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and it's a premise (and promise) that's since proved seductive to governments large and small.

Whether it will have a similar impact remains to be seen but for now, all we know is that the world has been gifted with a new museum. That alone is cause for celebration.

Bloomberg

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