Abu Dhabi’s universal museum

Louvre Abu Dhabi’s values and identity are based on discovery, exchange and education. The ultimate aim of the museum is to allow visitors to discover for themselves how art developed in different cultures and civilisations around the world.

Museums traditionally display objects and artworks belonging to an artistic civilisation, historical period or art movement in one room. While giving us a taste of what a particular culture may have been like, this approach can give the impression of hermetically sealed cultures developing with no outside influence, no exchange or trade of ideas, knowledge, trends or stories.

The Louvre Abu Dhabi will be different. Its unique museographic approach – displaying objects and art chronologically - will explore connections between seemingly disparate civilisations and cultures around the world. This is what will make the museum truly universal, transcending geography and nationality.

The universal approach suits Abu Dhabi well, reflecting the city’s position at the crossroads of east and west, and its ancient and vital role in the days of the Silk Route, when the region linked Europe and the Indian Ocean, opening up exchanges between Asia and Africa. Louvre Abu Dhabi and the wider Saadiyat Cultural District will be a place where diverse and far-flung parts of the world can meet to exchange ideas and culture.

Louvre Abu Dhabi is developing its own national collection, which will be enriched by loans from French museums including Musée du Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, and Centre Pompidou. The dialogue between artworks, sculptures and objects allow visitors to discover shared influences and intriguing connections between different cultures around the globe – giving insight into the history of humankind since the beginning of time.

Louvre Abu Dhabi will be developed with the expertise of the Agence France-Museums and in partnership with the Musée du Louvre, renowned for its museological excellence since its foundation in 1793.