The art of an exhibition: the philosophy of curating Louvre Abu Dhabi’s first collections

The news is finally out. When Louvre Abu Dhabi opens at the end of next year it will do so with a collection that boasts some of the most famous names in art history: da Vinci, Monet, Pollock, Rothko and Matisse. For a while at least.

Many of the major paintings, such as Vincent van Gogh’s haunting self-portrait and Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair, will only stay in Abu Dhabi for a year, while many of the books, manuscripts and works on paper will have to be returned after a mere three months. It’s a schedule that has the curatorial teams at Agence-France Muséums (AFM), and Louvre Abu Dhabi looking far beyond the museum’s opening in 2015.

“We are already starting to think about year two and what will be missing after the [return of] the first loans,” says Jean-François Charnier, AFM’s scientific director. “Now is the time for us to work together on what we call the ‘recipe’ and to think about the next list.”

For some, the prospect of having to replace such a rare and seemingly irreplaceable painting as Leonardo da Vinci’s La Belle Ferronnière would be a daunting task.

“This is not a museum that will stay the same for 10 years and it’s not a museum that will change completely like a new exhibition – it’s somewhere in between and I think that is interesting,” Charnier says. “We are not working on totally permanent galleries, they will be semi-permanent galleries because the change will be important year-on-year. This mobility, this flexibility, this volatility is a key element of the identity of Louvre Abu Dhabi.”

Original article by Nick Leech

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The art of an exhibition: the philosophy of curating Louvre Abu Dhabi’s first collections