Trying to hammer down an estimated completion date for the Abu Dhabi outpost of the Guggenheim Museum, has at times felt as tricky as pinning a name on Banksy.
The project was first announced back in 2006, with a launch date of 2012. That was rolled back to 2017, a date which also came and went “our building is challenging” said Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in a press briefing reported on by The Art Newspaper, “it will be his big, late masterpiece” (referring to Frank Gehry, the building’s designer).
Frank Gehry himself, described his vision for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi as “intentionally ‘messy’, moving into clarity.”
Armstrong also gave another firm, realistic timeline for completion “We think it should be five years from next week … It looks like everything is coming together so we can say something definitive. It has been a relatively long gestation”.
As outside, so within. Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will exhibit a collection of modern and contemporary art, from some of the most important creatives of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Abu Dhabi Culture has stated that the museum will have “a special emphasis on West Asian, North African and South Asian art” and will demonstrate “the interconnected nature of today’s art world, where cross-cultural sources of inspiration and transcultural exchange have become the norm.”
Exhibitions at Guggenheim will be curated around the work of individual artists, the histories of various art movements, and around grand themes with pieces from multiple artists across time and space.
The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi’s cones have been designed to provide ventilation and shade for the museum’s alfresco courtyard areas.
