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In museums, who gets to represent whose culture? It's an old question that in the U.S. tends to play out most publicly when Native American patrimony and culture are displayed in museums. When such cultural controversies become global, often ownership comes into question--who really owns the Elgin Marbles, for example? The perniciousness and persistence of colonialism has dragged many of these conflicts into the 21st century. But what happens when the tables are turned, when a Middle Eastern country--specifically Abu Dhabi--wants to represent Western culture, and even make use of Western museums' brand names in the process? And how should museums in the West advise colleagues in the East who are new to the museum field?
These and other questions are facing major museums--including the Smithsonian, which is advising the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage on a Bedouin museum; the Guggenheim, which in 2012 will open a 300,000-square-foot museum there that has alternately been described as a medieval cathedral and pharaonic"; and the Louvre, which has licensed its name--to the tune of $520 million--and its expertise and art (for an additional $747 million) to an art museum slated to open in the city in 2012.
(To see the designs of the new museums, as well as read artistic statements from their "starchitects," check out this round-up from ArchNewsNow.)
About Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates and its second largest city, with nearly 900,000 people residing in it. The Guardian provides some history and context for the United Arab Emirates cultural interests:
They were once little more than oil outposts in the desert, wealthy but remote, seven emirates bound together in a federation on the south-eastern tip of the Arabian peninsula. But the United Arab Emirates are fast reinventing themselves as a cultural and recreational hub, with tens of billions of dollars of investment transforming Abu Dhabi and Dubai in particular. Abu Dhabi, whose petrodollars give it one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, is styling itself as the cultural alternative to Dubai's more ritzy holiday and retail destination.
The emirates capital plans an "upscale cultural district" on Saadiyat, with the $400m Guggenheim museum part of a $27bn government-funded development that will include museums, a concert hall and art galleries alongside two golf courses, hotels and an "iconic 7-star property". The Dubai plans include indoor ski slopes, an underwater hotel, a $4bn theme park, and the elite island development known as The World.
The billion-plus dollars that Abu Dhabi is paying France is part of a long-standing economic relationship with the Western European nation. As The New York Times reports, there may be a bit of quid pro quo underlying the French government's willingness to cut a deal with Abu Dhabi.
For France the agreement signals a new willingness to exploit its culture for political and economic ends. In this case, it also represents something of a payback: the United Arab Emirates has ordered 40 Airbus 380 aircraft and has bought about $10.4 billion worth of armaments from France during the last decade.
Louvre Abu Dhabi
Much of the controversy has swirled around the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which will feature art from throughout history and all the world's regions, including Islamic art. At the time the French government was negotiating with Abu Dhabi, 4,650 museum experts signed a petition protesting the deal, claiming that the Louvre was behaving more like a profit-maximizing corporation than as a protector of and educator about the world's, and particularly France's, art.
Others have criticized the petitioners. Maymanah Farhat, a specialist in modern and contemporary Arab art and the editor of ArteNews, says colonial turnabout is fair play. In a long and thoughtful article, she writes,
Much of the opposition to the proposed Abu Dhabi Lourve lament that the French public will be deprived of its heritage. Three out of eight of the departments that structure the Louvre collection contain art from the Middle East and North Africa and are categorized as such: "Near Eastern Antiquities," "Egyptian Antiquities" and "Islamic Art." If this latest transaction with Abu Dhabi does in fact indicate a move to exploit France's patrimony, then it must be acknowledged that the "French culture" being disputed over is not purely French nor is it devoid of a ruthless colonial history. In theory then, according to French opinion, it is perfectly acceptable to exploit non-French peoples and cultures for economic gain,
