Arab businessman becomes patrons of arts By Margaret Coker Cox News Service ABU DHABI - With oil prices near record highs, it's not surprising that oil-exporting Arab nations are on a shopping spree. The stories are legion: Arab businessmen acquiring fleets of private jets, wealthy playgrounds in the desert that include indoor ski slopes and world-class golf courses. In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates and owner of 9 percent of the world's oil reserves, there is another item on the shopping list: Art. Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahayan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi, is spending billions of dollars to lure world-renowned architects, artists and filmmakers to make his city-state the new cultural capital of the Middle East. The government and personal outlay for art has Sheikh Khalifa's own people comparing him and his family to the Medicis, the powerful Florentine clan that led the Italian Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries. “You could say that our rulers are like the Medicis. They see art as a key part of civilization,” said Bassem Al Kudsi, who helps run the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, the government agency involved in arts appreciation. “They see art as a way to bridge different cultures and bring beauty to the world.” The centerpiece of the sheikh's plan is a $27 billion state-financed complex of art museums, a performance hall and other cultural institutions being built on an island called Saadiyat. The price tag may sound like a lot, but it equals roughly what the city-state draws in oil-export revenues in just four months. Saadiyat, or Happiness Island, is a spit of land about half the size of Bermuda, off the coast of Abu Dhabi, on which a branch of France's Louvre and a Guggenheim museum designed by famed architect Frank Gehry are to open by 2011. In all, five landmark cultural institutions are to be built along the island's inland-facing coastline, including a maritime museum, a national heritage museum and a performing arts center whose iconic design is meant to rival the Sydney Opera House in Australia. As part of the deals, the Louvre and the Guggenheim will place portions of their art collections on loan to the Abu Dhabi branches. The museum cluster will be surrounded by parks, a residential district and a resort facility that developers hope will triple annual tourism to Abu Dhabi to more than 3 million visitors a year. The sheik and his family reportedly have set aside $500 million to acquire their own art collection. These pieces, over time, will supplement and then replace many of the loaned collections from the French and Guggenheim collections. But in this predominately Muslim culture, the question looms: Just how much artistic freedom will be allowed in Abu Dhabi? Will works like the Venus de Milo or controversial modern art be on displayed at Saadiyat? The ruling family's own acquisitions will likely set the tone for the degree of openness and tolerance within the museums itself, said one Emirati official associated with Saadiyat. The notion is that the sheik and his clan - like the great families of Italy's gilded age that commissioned Michelangelo, da Vinci and other artists - will see to it that the artists they employ follow their patron's sense of taste and decorum. But in France, the news that the Louvre had agreed to lend its name to Abu Dhabi as well as its cultural treasures brought gasps from some political and cultural elites. Last year, as the Guggenheim signed its deal with Abu Dhabi, the director of the Guggenheim Foundation, Thomas Krens, said that cultural sensitivities would be considered when planning exhibitions. “Our objective is not to be confrontational, but to engage in a dialogue,” Krens said. “This isn't New York.” Meanwhile, the Guggenheim project raised different concerns. Some within American art circles expressed surprise that the foundation, named for a powerful Jewish-American family, decided to build its largest museum to date in a Muslim country that refuses to have diplomatic ties with Israel. But Guggenheim was not alone in seeing an attractive partner in the heart of the Arab world. The vision of bringing art to the desert - and the money that Abu Dhabi has put behind it - has attracted some big names. French architect Jean Nouvel is building the Louvre branch, Iraqi Zaha Hadid is creating the performing arts center and Japan's Tadao Ando is designing the maritime museum. Other art and culture project partners include the New York Film Academy, which opened its Abu Dhabi campus in January, and Paris' Sorbonne, which has opened a branch for teaching art, art history, humanities and philosophy, among other subjects. New York University plans to open an Abu Dhabi campus in 2010. “It makes me proud that we are going to be home to cultural treasures that the whole world admires,” said Mansour Sharif, an Emirati business management executive. __
